


Survival Among the Stars

by anxiousscififan



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Galaxy Garrison, Galra Empire, Gen, I place my oc off-screen if she has to be in a canon scene, Keith makes a few cameos, Kerberos Mission, Like ridiculously so, Medical Procedures, Mental Health Issues, Shadam mentioned, Space rebels, Torture, Trauma, adashi, it's kinda mild but still
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 04:31:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 23
Words: 32,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14394336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anxiousscififan/pseuds/anxiousscififan
Summary: Kidnapped and billions of miles from help, the crew of the Kerberos Mission is thrust into circumstances none of them had ever thought could possibly exist. The stakes are terrifyingly high; for science officers Samuel and Matthew Holt, pilot Takashi Shirogane, and medic Rissa Olsen, it's adapt or die.





	1. Launch Day

     This was it.  
     The late August air was hot, dry, and full of anticipation. My mom tapped Commander Holt on the shoulder and asked him to take a picture of our whole family, to which he cheerfully agreed. Both my parents stood close to me, and all my six younger siblings gathered in as well. Our backdrop was the towering launch apparatus for the shuttle craft in which I would be departing in just a few hours. Commander Holt snapped several photos for us, happily yelling instructions for poses and silly faces. He was a kind man, and I was glad that my first off-Earth assignment would be under his command.  
     In fact, the whole of our crew was a pleasant group. Commander Samuel Holt and his son, Cadet Matthew Holt, formed a genius and heartwarming research and technology team, and our pilot, Lieutenant Takashi Shirogane was kind, patient, and extremely competent at the helm. I, Ensign Rissa Olsen, would serve as the crew medic, and I was probably the least pleasant person in the group, but even I considered myself to be a decently nice person.  
     After retrieving the camera from Commander Holt, my mother threw her arms around me in a tight and tender embrace. The mission was only supposed to last two or three months, depending on flight conditions and mechanical upkeep, and I had been away from home for longer than that, but this time was different. Not only was I going to Kerberos, farther than any other humans had traveled, but I would also have no means of contacting my family directly. Any information they received on the mission would come through our transmissions to the Galaxy Garrison. My stoic father joined in the hug, and soon all six of my younger siblings were mauling me, jokingly mussing the long brown hair I was rather protective of. We descended into a nine-person pile of giggles and far too much affection for my likes. I tolerated it all cheerfully, though, knowing I would miss them just as much as they would miss me.  
     “Remember the family rules: be brilliant, and no falling allowed,” my dad finally said, grinning in contained pride.  
     “Obviously. What would I be other than brilliant?” I joked. “But Dad, even if my clumsy self does fall, the gravity out there is so little I should be fine.”  
     “Rules are rules,” my teenage sister Renee chimed in with a laugh.  
     “Just keep yourself and your crew safe and healthy. Especially your crew. They are a lot nicer than you are,” my mom teased, gesturing to the men. Commander Holt and Matt were finishing their goodbyes with wife and mother Colleen and daughter and sister Katie, and Lieutenant Shirogane was bidding farewell to a cadet whose name I didn’t know.

     “That is the whole reason I’m going on this mission, isn’t it?” My parents didn’t know this, but a young medic like me going on a mission like this one was highly unusual. I was part of a compromise between Commander Holt and the Garrison; Lieutenant Shirogane would only be approved for the mission if a medically trained individual were included in the crew. A proper doctor was out of the question given the short notice of the agreement, but a young, unestablished medic like me would do the job AND be inexpensive to employ.  
     The time to leave drew closer, and I noticed that my brother, Marcus, who would soon start his third and final year at the Garrison, was being uncharacteristically quiet. I even caught him eyeing Matt with what was unmistakable as jealousy.  
     “Relax, Marcus,” I said. “Matt is a freak of nature when it comes to tech. It’s why they let him graduate early. Besides, don’t you have that Moon excursion coming up soon?”  
     “Yeah, but that’s just the Moon, and no matter how well I do this year, there is no way I can just fly through the system like that guy and go as far as Pluto anytime soon,” he grumbled.  
     “You are a pilot, and a very good one. You are playing a different game altogether, and you are doing it well. Don’t compare yourself to Matt; he’s a dweeb anyway. A nice one, but a total dweeb.” A smile cracked Marcus’s face, and I drew him into a hug. “Just look after Renee at the Garrison, will you? Don’t let your third-year friends gang up on your little first-year sister. Otherwise, when I come back, I’ll have to gang up on you,” I teased.  
     He promised to behave himself, and I hugged each family member one last time before joining my crew for the ascent into the shuttle craft. My little sisters were getting antsy from all the waiting, but they were ecstatic to see me enter my spaceship.  
     We needed to be inside preparing our stations about an hour before launch, so while I was doing my pre-launch duties, I could still see my family far below us from the porthole-like window near my seat. There was my father, Geoffrey Olsen, my mother, Diane Running Crane Olsen, and my siblings. Marcus, at age 17, was the oldest after me and an aspiring Garrison fighter pilot. 15-year-old Renee was a communications technology student beginning this year, and 12-year-old David was beginning flight training to follow in his older brother’s footsteps. The younger sisters—Lila at age 9, Eva at age 6, and Rochelle at age 5—were still too young to really know what they wanted to do when they got older, but they liked to talk about going to space like Rissa someday. I never had an issue with homesickness in all my Garrison education and additional training, probably because with a family like mine, I always knew I was never alone. We all supported each other’s dreams, near or far.  
     “Garrison Command has given us the all-clear to begin takeoff,” Commander Holt informed us. “Systems status?”  
     “Navigation and flight systems are go,” Lieutenant Shirogane called from the cockpit.  
     “Life support systems and all emergency medical equipment are go,” I affirmed.  
     “Communication systems are go, Dad. Sir,” Matt stammered. Commander Holt simply smiled and tousled his son’s honey-colored hair.  
     “It’s a long mission to be calling your old man ‘sir,’ Matt. Don’t you worry about that. Mechanical systems are go. We are beginning takeoff,” Commander Holt directed his last statement to the ground command center.  
     “Ten-four,” came the confirmation from the communication system.  
     “Strap in everyone,” Commander Holt ordered excitedly. “Shiro, take us away.”


	2. The Kerberos Crew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things weren't always horrible on the Kerberos Mission...

          Once we were clear of the Earth’s gravity and had abandoned our craft’s launch boosters, Lieutenant Shirogane set the ship to autopilot and joined the rest of us in the common control area.

          “And now you won’t need me for a few days until we reach the asteroid belt,” he joked. “I’m headed to take a nap.”

          “No computer could fly this thing better than you, Shiro,” Matt said with a grin. I also could have sworn there was a slight pink tinge to his face as he spoke. Was he blushing?

          If he were, Shirogane certainly didn’t notice. “Flattery isn’t going to make me go any easier on you during daily workouts, Matt,” he laughed. Matt groaned and threw back his head and hands in mock defeat. We all chuckled a little.

          I had turned my seat to face the others, but I kept myself strapped in. It wasn’t for safety reasons; the Garrison had refined artificial gravity about a decade ago, and I was comfortable performing emergency surgeries at the speed at which we were traveling. Instead, I simply needed a feeling of security in this very new adventure, and the seat belt was simple, subtle, and helpful.

          Despite the subtlety, the lieutenant seemed to notice my tension. “First off-Earth assignment?” he asked gently.

          I nodded and responded, “Yes, sir. First out of Earth’s orbit, anyhow. I graduated from the Garrison only a year before this position opened up, so they had me working as a med tech on the ground.”

          He shuddered at my words. “Please don’t call me ‘sir.’ I’m only a little older than you, and that makes me sound ancient. Call me Shiro. Almost everyone does. Only Keith calls me ‘sir,’ and he’s mostly joking.”

          “If you say so sir. Shiro,” I corrected myself.

          “Like I said, it is a long mission for excessive formalities,” Commander Holt declared. “Within this craft, we are family, so we are going to need to get to know each other much better. Matt, Shiro, and I have known each other a while, but I’m not about to let you feel left out, Rissa.”

          It was true. Besides some crucial medical information that made my presence on the mission necessary, I didn’t know much about Shiro or the Commander besides name, rank, and specialty. I knew Matt a bit better because he had been in my brother’s class, but even they had never been much more than acquaintances. I had picked up on some of the attributes of the men I was traveling with during training exercises before the mission, but most of our preparation had been individual, especially mine as the only medic.

          “First things first. We are all going to say where we are from. I’ll go first, then Matt, then Shiro, then Rissa. My wife and I are both from Bormio, Italy.” Commander Holt must have seen my look of surprise because he went on. “My father was from the States, hence the name ‘Holt,’ but my mother and her family were all from Italy, as are all of Colleen’s relatives. I went to the Garrison as a cadet back in its first days, but I went back to Italy after graduating to be with Colleen. We were married while she was attending University, and when she had finished school, we immigrated permanently to Arizona to help further develop the Garrison.”

          Matt nodded. “Yep, and Katie and I were born and raised in Flagstaff, but we used to spend summers in Bormio back when we were younger and not so busy.” He smiled at the memory.

          “Oh, even I didn’t know that. That is really neat!” Shiro commented. “I’m originally from Naganohara, Japan, but I haven’t really lived there permanently since I started at the Garrison Flight School when I was 12. I really only go back for vacations anymore.”

          I realized after a silence that it was my turn. Ugh, introduction activities. One can leave planet Earth but still never escape them.

          “I was born on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana,” I stated, “and when I got to be school-age, my family moved into Great Falls.”

          “Awesome! Do you belong to a tribe?” Matt asked eagerly.

          “I’m enrolled in the Assiniboine Nation, but I have blood from a mix of different Sioux tribes. My dad is also a white guy, so I’m an Olsen,” I explained.

          “Well aren’t we a diverse bunch!” exclaimed Commander Holt. “Next, we should all say our ages and birthdays. I think that is great information to get perspective on a person’s position in life. I’m 48, and my birthday is March 26.”

          “I’m technically still 17, but I’m turning 18 on September 23, so in less than a month,” Matt said, clearly wanting to seem as old and mature as possible. “That’s why I’m still wearing my cadet uniform; the Garrison legally couldn’t give me an officer’s commission before I turn 18.”

          “Aww, great! We’ll get to celebrate together! And when we come back home, you’ll get to match the rest of us.” The friendliness of my own exclamation surprised me. Matt beamed in response.

          “I’m 23, and my birthday is in February,” Shiro said blandly.

          That was suspicious. I decided to inquire further. “You said that in a really weird way. When in February?”

          “The end,” he replied shortly.

          The realization dawned on me suddenly. “Oh, my goodness. You are a Leap Baby! Your birthday is February 29, isn’t it?” I did some quick math in my head. “You are only five and a half!”

          Shiro scowled as the Holts and I snickered. “Oh, wow, I have _never_ heard _that_ one before,” he bristled, voice dripping sarcasm.

          “Well, I am a full and proper 20 years old as of July 18,” I replied with mock pride. Suddenly, this activity wasn’t so horrible.

          We continued sharing things about ourselves for several hours, and the learning did not stop there. Over the days and weeks that followed, I learned that Commander Holt, who eventually insisted that I call him Sam, snored loudly and had an unexplainable love for the freeze-dried peas in our food stores. Matt was terribly accident-prone, frequently needing minor medical attention. He was also a closeted bisexual; he would clumsily flirt with both Shiro and me, and his blushes when we praised him became a deeper and deeper pink as time went on. Shiro preferred the bottom bunk in theory, but he kept hitting his head on the bottom of my mattress because he was too tall, so we had to switch bunks. His favorite form of exercise was classical Japanese Jujutsu, which happened to also be mine, so we would spar in the mornings while Sam and Matt did calisthenics and watched. 

          When September 23 rolled around, we were nearing our destination. Pluto and its moons are pretty tiny, so we couldn’t quite see Kerberos yet, but we were far enough away from Earth that our home planet was an indiscernible speck in the bright haze of the sun. We sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to Matt in the empty loneliness of the outer solar system, perfectly content for the time being with the little company we had. We were a beautiful, eclectic family of space wanderers, and we loved every minute. 


	3. Doomed on Distant Dirt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...but all good things must come to an end.

     Something you need to understand about the outer reaches of our solar system is that nothing makes much sense out there. Rocky objects in the Kuiper Belt tend to have oblong shapes, and many of these objects are coated in ice. Orbits and rotations follow strange patterns. Pluto is a dwarf planet smaller than Earth's moon, but it has five moons of its own, one of which is actually larger than some of the other dwarf planets in our system. Kerberos, which we were able to identify based on its relative roundness compared to its sister moons, has a diameter of less than 20 kilometers along its largest dimension. It is _tiny_. The appeal of a mission to Kerberos lay only in the reflectivity of its surface in telescope photos. This indicated uncontaminated ice on about half the moon's surface.

     At our speed, a sudden stop would have surely killed us all instantly, so we had to begin our deceleration a few days before our projected arrival at Kerberos. We reached the Plutonian system in early October, and we remained in orbit for a day to get higher-quality photographs of the dwarf planet and all its moons. On our second day, Shiro took us down to the surface of Kerberos. The landing process was simple enough—no boosters or atmospheric considerations—and the takeoff process would be much more straightforward here than it was on Earth. There was hardly any gravity to overcome on the Plutonian moon. We donned our space suits and moved the research equipment into the airlock before making the transition into the vacuum of space.

     Our suits had us protected from the harsh conditions, and I had been in space before in Earth's orbit on training exercises, but it was noticeably chillier out here than I had thought it would be. I shouldn't have been surprised; we were over 3 billion miles away from the sun, but it was a startling sensation nonetheless. The light was dim, and since there was no air, the only sounds came through the crew's communication links.

     The landing site and the ideal extraction sites were, unfortunately, not the same, so the men loaded the drilling equipment into a lunar rover. They began to drive off slowly, Sam walking alongside to probe the ice as they went, searching for the best sample sites. Meanwhile, I kept watch near the ship and continued to take photographs.

     The silence of the tiny, desolate moon was calming. The sun looked so small from here, and even the closer gas giant planets were nearly invisible because of distance. The quiet was soon broken, however, by the faint grunts of my crew members over the communicator in my helmet. I couldn't see them anymore because of the dramatic topography of the ice, but I could tell that they were setting up the ice bore and beginning to drill.

     "Easy, son. This ice is delicate," I heard Sam warn Matt over the comms.

     "Amazing. Isn't this exciting, Shiro?" came the youngest voice.

     "You guys get a little more excited about ice samples than I do," Shiro chuckled in response.

     "This is history in the making," Sam declared. "Not only have we traveled farther than any human ever has, but this ice could hold microscopic clues about the existence of life outside Earth."

     "Think of it, Dad. We could use those clues to become the first people to meet aliens!"

     "My life's work would be complete."

_Oh, boys. Be careful what you wish for._

     As if on cue, the lunar surface began to shake. I steadied myself and my camera, looking around for clues to what was happening.

     "What is that?" Sam cried out. "Seismic activity?"

     "We should get back to the ship," warned Shiro.

     Before any of us could really start moving, however, a massive space vessel appeared on the horizon. It was clearly not human in origin, and for a few seconds, I stood and stared in shock.

     "Wha—? What is that?! It can't be..." Sam stammered in confusion. It seemed the rest of my crew was having a similar reaction.

     The first of us to respond sensibly was Shiro. "Run! Come on, run!"

     I began to run towards our ship, an interesting feat in the low gravity. My stomach dropped as I heard screams from my crew members. I looked back to see the men and our equipment being lifted up in something similar to the tractor beams in those old _Star_ _Trek_ shows. I stared for a split second in horror, but I began to run again when I realized there was absolutely nothing I could do to help them. I wasn't very far from the ship, so I almost made it, but I tripped. _No falling allowed—_ my father's words rang in my head. And I didn't fall. I was suddenly being suspended above the moon's surface in the beam of violet light. I could still hear the yells of my crew members far behind me as we all struggled to no avail. The ground and the ship drew farther away as we were pulled upward towards the alien vessel. 

 


	4. After the Beam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew meets the purple space Nazis. 'Nuf said.

          We were brought into the ship along with some ruined equipment and rock from the surface of Kerberos. Once we were inside, a set of doors slid shut behind us and the beam was shut off, causing us to drop to the floor. I stood and took a glance at the condition of my crew. Sam and Matt seemed to be fine besides being terrified, but it looked as though some debris had struck Shiro on the way up, rendering him unconscious. I knelt beside him and took my atmospheric probe out of a pocket in my suit, trying to determine if it would be safe to remove his helmet to treat him. I was stopped by a firm grip on both my arms. My probe clattered to the floor as my hands were bound behind me by an alien being that I could not yet see because of my helmet-impeded peripheral vision. Another alien stepped into my view to examine the unresponsive Shiro. The alien unceremoniously ripped off his helmet, and I yelped in protest. Shiro did not seem to be suffocating, though, so I took that as a good sign. The large, purple-skinned being above him grunted that he was still alive and proceeded to drag him from the room. Sam, Matt, and I were all pushed by a guard each in the same direction.

          I was by no means a small human, especially for a woman. With a Native American mother and a Scandinavian father, I was basically half Indian warrior, half Viking. There was never really a chance of me being anything other than tall and full-bodied. Still, these aliens towered over me, standing at around 7 feet tall, and they each probably weighed as much as two of me. We entered a control room manned by an even larger alien, who seemed to be in charge. The guards forced us to our knees with practically no effort, and I noticed Shiro regaining consciousness beside me. The largest commanding alien pulled up a screen with an image of another, rather terrifying purple being and began to speak.

          “Emperor Zarkon, we were scouting system X-9-Y as ordered when we found these primitive scientists. I don't think they know anything useful.”

          The on-screen emperor replied, “Take them back to the main fleet for interrogation. The Druids will find out what they know.”

          I was practically paralyzed with fear at this point, but to my right, Shiro began to protest. “Please, we come from a peaceful planet! W-We mean you no harm! We're unarmed!”

          Neither of those statements was entirely true. Humans are far from peaceful; we are simply too technologically unadvanced to travel outside our own territory. I was also carrying a syringe full of sedative in my suit, which could technically be used as a weapon. The guards did not respond to Shiro’s remarks, though, rewarding him only by knocking him out once more with the butt of a weapon.

          The commanding alien in the room ended the transmission with the emperor and ordered the guards back to their original posts. Robotic soldiers took their place as our chaperones, and we were led in a line out into the corridor again—first Sam, then Matt, then Shiro dragged by his bound hands, then me. As we marched through the hall, I could hear whispers from inside cells that lined the walls.

          “Look, they brought in another one.”

          “Who is it?”

          “Over there. It's another one.”

          In front of me, Shiro was starting to wake up again, and he didn’t look great. He looked around frantically, and I tried to smile reassuringly at him, but my darkly tinted helmet was still on, so he didn’t seem to get the message. When we reached the cell meant for us, our hands were released, but we were all tossed roughly inside before it was locked. The light was dim and, like seemingly everything else on this ship, purple. Sam, Matt, and I removed our helmets, and a stale smell assaulted my nose.

          “Are either of you hurt?” I asked as calmly as I could. The Holts both shook their heads in silent shock. Shiro was attempting to stand and move towards the cell door.

          “Shiro, you need to lay down. You were knocked out twice. You probably have a concussion,” I urged. He didn’t reply, so I took his arm and gently pulled him to the cot in the corner of the cell. “Doctor’s orders. You need to take it easy but try to stay awake for a while.”  _Especially since we don’t have access to your medications anymore,_ I thought but did not say.

          The situation was too serious for anyone to point out that I wasn’t really a doctor, just a field medic. Regardless, without cranial scanning equipment, there wasn’t much anyone—doctor or not—could do for Shiro’s head except keep watch of him and hope he didn’t develop more adverse symptoms. Ice and water could help relieve swelling, so I went over to the cell door and began to try and get a guard’s attention. There were no living guards around, only robots, and they paid me no mind. Eventually, a robot came with a pile of clothing for us and demanded that we change and turn over all our belongings. I asked it for the ice and water, but it didn’t seem to process the request. I sighed and distributed the clothing, and we all changed in separate corners. Before turning over my suit, I tried to retrieve the syringe, but I found that it had shattered after being thrown into the cell. I tucked a few antiseptic wipes, suture kits, and painkillers under my snug new outfit. 

          When Shiro handed his things over, the robot forcibly removed his electric muscle stimulation cuff. “Not a chance!” I yelled, but the robot pointed a weapon at me, and Shiro shook his head as if to tell me to stand down.

          The robot went on its way, and I looked around at my crew, harried and newly clad in black unitards with loose eggplant-colored shirts on top. We were a right mess, but I was going to do everything I could to keep them in the best shape as possible. I shooed Shiro back to the cot and sat nearby to keep watch on him. Sam and Matt huddled on the other side of the cell.

         “What are we going to do now, Dad?” Matt said hoarsely.

         “They are bigger than us, stronger than us, and outnumber us. For now, we’ll cooperate,” came the equally weak reply.

         “Do you think we’ll get out?” It was clear that Matt barely dared ask.

         Sam sighed. “In complete honesty, I don’t know what they have planned for us, but whatever it is, we are going to do our best to stick together.”

         I took a deep breath and stared at my hands. “If we can’t get back in contact with Earth, what do you think the Garrison will do? Will they look for us? Will they ever know what happened?”

         Shiro reached down from the cot and took my hand in his, squeezing gently. “It doesn’t matter what the Garrison does because as long as I’m alive, I’m never giving up on getting us back to our families. It may take a while, and there will be lots of not knowing, but we _will_ see them again.”

         I squeezed his hand back. “You know, you’re pretty wise for a five-and-a-half-year-old,” I said with a faint smile.

         He rolled his eyes but didn’t object to the teasing. We all stayed rather still and quiet as the hours dragged on and it became clear it was getting to be what we considered ‘night.’ Although uneasy, we rested, needing to be alert for whatever interrogation our captors had planned for us.

 


	5. Haggar's Lab

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yikes...this lady and her cronies are super creepy.

          We were awoken after what I guessed was several hours by several robotic soldiers entering the cell. Shiro was still alive with no swelling, so I considered my duty successfully completed regarding his head. The robots replaced our bonds and led us once more out into the hall. I looked around at where we were going, trying to get my bearings, but I’ve never been gifted with directions, and all the corridors looked the same. Eventually, we were led down a narrower passage, after which the lighting and wall designs changed, and the smell was fresher. I supposed we had moved into a different ship. We continued walking, occasionally passing small groups of robots or armored purple aliens. The living soldiers eyed us with amusement, disdain, or both.

          Our destination was a laboratory-like room, more brightly lit than the hallways. The robots strapped Sam, Matt, Shiro, and me each to a slightly angled but upright panel. I began to panic a bit; in movies, nothing good ever happened to people who were restrained like this. The robots left the room, and I glanced at my crew. They seemed about as terrified as I was.

          Two strange, hooded figures entered after a few moments. They were perhaps even taller than the other aliens we had encountered, and they wore hooked, beak-like masks. My blood ran a little colder in their presence. One stood behind a control panel, and the other approached Shiro.

          “I’ve heard you like to talk out of turn,” a raspy voice mocked. “We’ll start with you. Tell me, what do you know of Voltron?”

          “We’ve never heard of it. Please let us return to our people.” Shiro’s voice was mostly calm, with only a hint of underlying fear. The interrogating figure, who I pieced together must be a Druid as mentioned before, nodded to his companion at the panel, who slid a long, gruesome finger along the screen. Visible arcs of electricity emanated from Shiro’s restraints, and he yelled out in pain.

          “Shiro!” I gasped, but my own cry turned to a scream as I was likewise punished for interjecting. The Druid stepped closer to Shiro, who was now breathing heavily.

          “We have heard rumors of a Lion of Voltron in or near your system. Multiple scout squads have disappeared in the area. Tell me what you know,” he hissed.

          “Nothing! On our home world, the people don’t even know of the existence of other intelligent life. We barely made it to where you found us,” Shiro reasoned. The Druid turned instead to Sam.

          “This one is older and wiser. Perhaps he will listen to reason and tell me what I wish to know. Where is the Voltron Lion?”

          “I don’t know what Voltron is, much less where,” Sam stated before seizing due to the electric shock.

          “Dad!” cried Matt. 

          “Stop!” I yelled at almost the same time.

          My outbursts had officially garnered the attention of the interrogator. He turned to me, and I gulped.

          “You seem to have something of a soft spot for your fellow captives. Perhaps their suffering can convince you.” The Druid once again signaled to the other, and Sam, Matt, and Shiro were all dealt a massive shock, too massive to possibly be safe.

          “Stop! It’s too much! You’ll kill them!” I shrieked. “We don’t have the information you want!”

          “Enough.”

          A hoarse female voice cut through the commotion in the room, and the Druids stopped what they were doing. A shorter cloaked figure had entered the room; it looked as though the owner of the voice was a slight, blue-skinned, white-haired woman.

          “I will determine if they are lying,” she said ominously.

          “Yes, High Priestess Haggar,” croaked the Druid by the control panel. The two Druids retreated to near the door, and the blue woman, Haggar, approached Sam. I stared in horror and awe as a purple and black orb of energy appeared in her outstretched hand.

          “What do you know of Voltron?” she demanded, holding the orb threateningly near his neck.

          “Before today, I had never heard the word,” Sam said quietly.

          Haggar seemed satisfied that he spoke the truth, and she moved down the line of panels to Matt. “And you? Do you know anything, child?”

          “No,” Matt nearly choked on the word in panic, but the Priestess believed him and continued.

          “Speak,” she practically spat at Shiro.

          “I don’t know any more than the others.”

          I noticed her glowing yellow eyes looking me over as she approached, clearly noting the many physical differences between me and the rest of my crew. “And you?” she hissed.

          The orb was now near my neck, and I could feel it exerting a force on my trachea, making it uncomfortable to breathe. I could almost feel her eyes boring into my mind, intent on the truth.

          “I have learned today that Voltron is something you want very much, but I do not know what it is, where it is, or why it’s so important to you.” Something about the energy of the orb caused me to state exactly what I was thinking, sass and all.  The Priestess kept the orb on me for a moment more, and being a medical nerd, I began to wonder how she was able to influence my brain and throat without even touching me. Thoughts of chemical and electrical signaling flooded my mind. Haggar looked at me with greater scrutiny, but then removed the orb, which dissipated into nothing.

          “These are nothing but a few primitive scientists and explorers. They know nothing of Voltron or our quest,” she finally declared. I was still too afraid of our entire situation to feel relieved. “The males are of no interest to me. This one, though, studies the science of life. Her mind has piqued my curiosity. Have some sentries take the others to the main prisoner processing wing. This one will stay here with us for a while longer,” she instructed the Druids, who acknowledged her with a slight bow. They left the room, but they soon returned with the robotic sentries. Panic began to rise inside me as Sam, Matt, and Shiro were escorted out of the room and the Druids approached my panel.

          “Rissa!” Shiro cried as the sinister beings closed in on me. He struggled against his sentry, but the robot prodded him into the hall with its weapon. My crew disappeared from my view, and the Druids began to attach electrode-like devices to my head.

          “You said it yourself; our science is primitive! How could my mind possibly benefit you?” I blurted at Haggar as she came close once more.

          “I too study the secrets of life, and in the many millennia I have searched, I have never found a species whose healers could not offer me new information or perspective in my research. The Galra have also never encountered your people before, so your knowledge of your species’ bodies may prove useful if the Empire must war against your race,” she explained with a sneer.

          “No!” I cried. “I won’t help you hurt any—ahhh!”

          I didn’t get to finish my protest because my captors began the painful process of extracting and recording my medical knowledge. Images flashed through my mind, diagrams I had memorized, dissections and surgeries I had performed. Information flooded my consciousness beyond tolerable levels; I relived years of anatomy and physiology lectures in mere minutes. It wasn’t just my knowledge of human biology they were after, either. They dug into my understanding of the basics of life, the driving forces behind all living processes, the flukes in human and other biology that defied the rules—everything. I couldn’t tell how long the process went on, but when it finally came to an end, I was practically delirious. Haggar muttered, “Interesting,” but I didn’t know what she meant.

          I barely registered her orders to have the sentries take me away, and before I knew what was happening, I had been transferred to another part of the ship or base where another towering purple alien inspected and questioned me briefly.

          “How old are you compared to the others here of your species?” he grunted the question.

          “Between the ages of the younger ones,” I sighed.

          “Put her with Commander Sendak’s prisoners. They are going to the arena for the next matches,” the alien ordered the sentries, and I shuffled along without resistance. I could barely stay conscious, let alone struggle. I was vaguely aware that I was being led to another ship, and the sentries eventually stopped in front of another cell. They opened the door and tossed me in once more, and the doors slid shut behind me. This time, the cell was pitch black, and there were many other beings inside.

          I groaned with the ache of my rough landing and the delirium of my mental ordeal, and in the darkness, I heard familiar voices.

          “Rissa?” whispered the tentative voice of Matt.

          “Rissa!” Shiro’s whisper was more urgent.

          I couldn’t respond; I was starting to lose consciousness. I felt strong arms lift me and pull me into a sitting position against what I realized was Shiro’s chest. A smaller hand rested on my shoulder, and having found two of my boys, I let go of reality for a while and passed out.

  


	6. Towards the Ring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because getting kidnapped and tortured wasn't bad enough...

             I woke up gradually, still in complete darkness with only the muffled sounds of my many cell mates to give me any sense of attachment to reality. I soon realized that I was still propped up against Shiro, his arms securing me around my torso. Someone shifted around to my left, and I guessed that it was Matt.

             “Hey, I’m supposed to be the one taking care of you,” I croaked, my voice sounding foreign and strange.

             “Oh, thank goodness you’re up! We knew you were alive, but we didn’t know if you were going to be okay,” Matt breathed out in relief. “How are you feeling?

             “Well, I had felt like I had been hit by a truck and had my brain liquified, but now I just feel a little groggy and disoriented.” I drew my knees toward my chest, and Shiro’s arms relaxed around me. I placed my head in my hands and rested my elbows on my thighs. “How long has it been?”

             “You came here maybe an hour after us, and you’ve been unconscious since then,” Shiro said from behind me. “We got some sleep after that, so we don’t really know how long it has been since then. A while, though.”

             I turned to where I figured Matt was. “Is your dad here?”

             “No,” he said weakly. “They said he was going to a labor camp and that we were going to some sort of arena.”

 _Neither of those sounds very good,_ I thought, but I didn’t say that. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll get back together again,” I reassured him, not entirely sure myself.

             “What exactly did they want with you back there?” Shiro asked tentatively.

             I sighed. “They dug through my mind somehow and learned everything I know about biology. They might use it to understand how to hurt humans, but I think the Haggar lady was a little obsessed with some larger motive.” I exhaled again in shame. “I’m afraid for Earth. I could never forgive myself if they used my head to harm anyone.”

             I felt a hand on each of my shoulders—Shiro’s on my right, and Matt’s on my left.

             “It’s not your fault. Think of what shape you were in after they did that to you! You didn’t choose this,” Matt said firmly.

             “Besides, we don’t know if they’ll even bother Earth. We’re primitive, remember?” Shiro added.

             I hugged my knees. “I guess we can only hope.”

             Without any light or means of telling time, it was impossible to say just how long we waited there in that dark cell. It felt like an eternity, but that is how most waiting feels. When the doors finally slid open once more, even the faint light from the hall was uncomfortable to all our eyes. As we were marched out, I got a look at all the other prisoners. They were all shapes, sizes, and colors, all clearly different alien species, none of which were anything like our captors. The sentries who escorted us made us form two lines as we walked, nudging us into an order of their liking; Matt was in front of the line to the left, and Shiro followed him. I was several places back from them in line. We were led out of the ship through a large cargo hangar onto solid ground. The open sky was above us, dark, but speckled with billions of unfamiliar stars. The atmosphere was thin but breathable. The sentries took us inside a large, foreboding facility and led us down a narrow, dark hallway. An open, well-lit area was visible at the end of the tunnel, and I could hear the roar of an enormous crowd. 

             “What’s going to happen?” I whispered to an alien beside me.

             “We are to face a gladiator in the ring and fight for the entertainment of Emperor Zarkon,” the blue, fish-like being replied gravely. “The fights are not usually strictly ordered to be to the death, but many of us will likely die today anyhow. The regular gladiators are quite ferocious.”

             I heard a terrible roar from inside the arena, so I stood on my tip-toes and peered around the crowd of prisoners to get a look. What I saw was horrendous. The thing in the arena was reminiscent of an ogre, with a massive but vaguely humanoid form, purple-grey skin, and a somewhat reptilian face. The creature wore thick armor and carried a scepter topped with an electric purple orb.

             “Ah, today’s beast is Myzax,” mused the cynical alien. “The matches will be quick and deadly. We will likely all be made to fight, and we will surely all perish.”

             I could hear Matt begin to panic. “I'm not going to make it. I'll never see my family again!”

             Behind him, Shiro tensed in concern. “You can do this,” he tried to reassure Matt.

             A sentry entered the tunnel from inside the ring and pointed a hooked sword at Matt. The eighteen-year-old was now audibly hyperventilating, even from my position in the back. My stomach plummeted inside me as the sentry approached him.

             Suddenly, Shiro charged forward, pushed Matt to the side, and rushed the sentry. He yanked the sword from its grip and brandished it above his head. Turning back to the crowd of prisoners, he yelled, “This is my fight!”

             He slashed the sword at Matt, the blade gleaming in the dim light of the tunnel. Matt screamed and crumpled to the ground on his side, clasping one knee in his hands. Shiro then tackled him such that he was on his back.

             “I want blood!” he shouted. My eyes grew wide and breath became shallow as I watched the shocking scene. Shiro’s face softened momentarily as he mumbled something to Matt. Another sentry came to assist the first, and the two robots pulled Shiro off of Matt and into the arena. An energized gate closed, locking him in, and he gave me a slight nod before turning to face his opponent. 


	7. Field Medicine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone's got to take care of Matt now...

          Matt hadn’t moved from the ground; he whimpered in pain.

          I pushed through the other prisoners and knelt beside him. A massive, bloody gash was visible through the gigantic tear in his pants, positioned above the knee. I needed something to staunch the bleeding; my purple over-shirt was fairly clean and didn’t serve much of a purpose, so I peeled it off and used it to apply pressure to Matt’s wound.

          “He was trying to get me sent to where my dad is. He was trying to save me,” Matt gasped.

          “Makes sense, but you need to quiet down and save your strength,” I muttered.

          Two alien soldiers approached from the back of the tunnel. The sentries must have signaled to them. One crouched down near me and snorted.

          “Great, he ruined this one. He won’t be fit for the arena now. Should we have the leg removed and replaced? Or should we just dispose of him altogether?” he asked his companion as if we weren’t right there hearing every word.

          “He _is_ pretty scrawny,” the other solder commented. “He might not be worth the trouble of a prosthetic.”

          “Or we could do neither of those things and just let me patch him up!” I protested. “He doesn’t have to lose his leg. I’m trained to fix this sort of thing.”

          The crouching soldier looked at me incredulously. “A Galra soldier could never keep a limb this damaged.”

          “Humans are pretty resilient, and he’s basically just a kid, so he’ll bounce back well enough to go to a camp,” I said. “I just need some sterilized salt water, fresh water, and clean bandages.”

          The soldier looked at his companion, who nodded. “That’s a pretty small investment to save a laborer. We can do that. Move him to the back of the tunnel, and we’ll be back.”

          They left, and the other prisoners helped me move Matt out of the way of the arena’s gate. Shouts, roars, and cheers could be heard from inside, so obviously something sickening and ‘exciting’ was happening with Shiro.

          “How bad is it really?” Matt inquired weakly.

          “You know, for someone who was never really into biology, Shiro sure did a good job of missing everything important. It’s quite literally a mere flesh wound. It’s deep, and it’ll leave a pretty gnarly scar, but there is no bone or tendon damage that I can see. It’s mostly just really messy,” I sighed with relief along with Matt.

          The soldiers returned with a box of the supplies I had requested: a bottle of clean drinking water, fresh bandages, and some sterile saline water. I set to work, the soldiers and a few prisoners watching intently. The rest watched the match, which was remarkably still going. Matt lay on the ground on his back, his leg elevated in my lap. I ripped the shreds of his pant leg off to prevent them from getting into the wound.

          First, I removed all the supplies I had tucked in my unitard. These would be invaluable. I opened a packet of painkillers and handed them and the drinking water to Matt.

          “These won’t kick in soon enough to help while I’m working, but you’ll be glad to have them later,” I said. Matt nodded gratefully and swallowed the pills.

          “Hold on; where did you get those?” a soldier demanded.

          “I held on to them when we were taken; you can punish me later,” I answered shortly. “The next thing I’m going to do is rinse the wound with the salt water. It is going to hurt like a mother, but it will prevent infection and further reduce bleeding. Brace yourself.”

          As I rinsed, Matt grimaced, grunted, and groaned, but when I was done, the wound looked a lot better. I hadn’t touched the wound with my hands yet, but I was about to, so I rinsed my hands as well and wiped them with an antiseptic towelette. I used a clean towelette to further sanitize Matt’s wound. He screamed for that part.

          “Sorry! Normally, I would have been able to numb the area before I did that.”

          With the wound all clean, it was now time to close it up. Matt was going to need a full row of deep-dermal sutures, so I selected a nylon suture kit; a versatile material for permanent stitching in muscle tissue. I soaked the needle and the nylon in the remaining salt water before starting the stitches. I had gotten through the first deep-dermal when a thunderous roar erupted from the crowd in the arena.

          “Unbelievable! The Earthling defeated Myzax!” one of the prisoners near the gate exclaimed. “Many thought it could never be done!”

          “Will Shiro be coming back, then?” Matt asked, but a soldier scoffed at the question.

          “Certainly not. If a prisoner wins a match, he becomes a full-time gladiator. Your fellow Earthling will be held with the others back at the main fleet.”

          I kept working on the wound as chants of “ _Champion! Champion! Champion!”_ could be heard from the crowd. The gate opened, and sentries entered the tunnel and began lining the other prisoners up.

          “The Emperor is satisfied with his entertainment for today. We are to return the prisoners to Commander Sendak’s ship,” a robotic voice stated. The alien soldiers nodded in acknowledgment.

          “We will continue to monitor these two until the healer has finished her work. We will then determine what Commander Sendak wishes for us to do with them,” one of the soldiers explained.

          The sentries escorted the other prisoners past us as I finished the deep-dermal stitches. I began a second, superficial row. Matt was still wincing, but it seemed the painkillers were working. After a few minutes, I had finished the second row of sutures, so I opened my only packet of antibiotic ointment and rubbed it gently into the gash. I finished by wrapping the leg in the bandages.

          “Well, you’re all put back together. It won’t be pretty, but it will do the job,” I said as I wrapped. “And who knows, maybe some girl or guy back home will think it looks super cool someday.” Matt looked at me with wide eyes. “Oh, come on, of course I noticed. When we get through all this, you may want to consider coming out. The closet is a nasty place to live, and your dad is one of the most understanding and supportive men I’ve ever met. There are hardly any homophobes still out there on Earth, and your dad is certainly not one of them.”

          “You’ve been in the closet?” Matt asked incredulously.

          “I’m a biromantic asexual. My family loves me dearly, but they are pretty old-fashioned, so there are some things I don’t think I’ll ever be able to share with them. So very few people still have a problem with non-heterosexual people, and I landed in a giant family full of them. I can’t tell you what to do, especially about something so personal, but you may be luckier than me in this way, so you might want to take advantage of that. Just something to think about,” I sighed as I finished tying off the bandage. “And you’re done! These bandages will need to be kept clean, so remember that.”

          “That was a touching conversation, but it is now time to go, and neither of you will ever see your home again,” a soldier declared as one grabbed each of us and pulled us to our feet. Without even giving me a chance to rinse the blood off my hands, they led us out of the tunnel to whatever fate awaited us. 

 


	8. A Lonely Earthling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The whole 'stick together' thing isn't really working out for the Kerberos crew...

     The soldiers pushed us along once more, me in front, Matt limping in back. Back through the halls we went, back outside the facility, and back through the cargo hangar of the ship. Instead of marching us back to our cell, however, the soldiers led us to a command room. A large, furry, purple alien with a mechanical arm and eye implant turned to face us.

     “Commander Sendak, this prisoner was seriously injured by the Champion before the gladiator match. The other here saved us a laborer by treating his wound, but she did so with unauthorized supplies. What are your orders regarding them?”

     The commander considered us for a moment before responding. “We will drop off the injured one at the Angorian Labor Camp on our way back to our patrol sector. As for the other, punish her as we do all troublemakers,” he said with a disconcerting smirk.

     “Vrepit sa, sir,” one of the soldiers declared, and both saluted with a fist across the chest. They removed us from the room, and they returned Matt to the cell. One soldier returned to his original post, and the other continued to lead me down yet another hallway.

     Our destination was a small room with an ominous-looking chair. A few sentries stood guard inside. I was thrust into the chair and restrained with my right arm extended. The soldier cut off the portion of my sleeve covering my forearm, baring the skin. Although I was very afraid of what was about to happen to me, I felt comforted knowing that I had saved Matt’s life. Whatever happened next would be worth it.

     A robotic arm appeared from a panel in the wall, armed with something that looked oddly similar to a tattoo gun. The arm calibrated and positioned itself over my arm and began its work. I observed quickly that it basically _was_ a tattoo gun as the device began to poke at and mark my skin. I winced a bit, but I had been expecting worse. A strange symbol began to form on my inner arm, and when it was finished, the robot arm retracted into the wall. The soldier unstrapped me and handed me over to a sentry.

     “What does this mark mean?” I inquired.

     “It is the Galra symbol for a troublemaker. Wherever you go, wherever you are held, we Galra will know that you are sneaky and disobedient and will treat you as such. Don’t worry though. You won’t have to deal with it long; the mark will send you straight to the front of the line the next time Commander Sendak is invited to sit in the Emperor’s box for a gladiator match,” the soldier smirked as the sentry marched me out of the room.

     Back at the cell, I found Matt in the dark.

     “Rissa, are you all right? What did they do to you?” he asked with frantic concern. I put a hand on his shoulder to calm him.

     “Relax, don’t work yourself up so much right now. They barely did anything; they just marked me as a troublemaker. It probably won’t make a big difference in what happens to me here.”

     “I hate to think of anything truly horrible happening to you because you saved me. I owe you and Shiro my life now,” he rambled.

     “If your life is ours now, just do as I say and keep yourself healthy and safe,” I ordered kindly. “I’m pretty sure Shiro would say the same thing.”

     “Actually, he said to take care of my father, but you aren’t too far off. Same idea, just for my dad,” Matt said, laughing grimly. “Do you think I’ll even end up at the same camp as my dad? There have got to be lots of them if these guys are an empire.”

     “Hard to say, but family sticks together, so I know you’ll do whatever you can to find and help him,” I reassured.

     “Heh, stick together. By tomorrow, we all might be in different places: Dad and me in labor camps, you stuck here, and Shiro as a gladiator. It hasn’t even been more than a couple of days since we were on Kerberos, and we’re already split up.”

     “Hey, don’t think like that,” I chastised. “Every one of us on that mission was there for a reason. We are capable people, and we will figure this out.” I drew him into a hug. He was a lot skinnier and dorkier than my brother Marcus, but he wasn’t too much older, and ‘big sister’ was a role I knew by heart. “We are going to survive, and we will deal with everything as it comes.”

     It seemed like it was only moments later that the doors of the cell opened, revealing a pair of sentries.

     I turned to Matt one last time. “The rules of my family are ‘be brilliant, and no falling allowed.’ That’s kept us in pretty good shape so far, so maybe remember that.”

     “Thank you so much for everything, Rissa,” Matt said as one sentry pulled him to his feet and started towards the door.

     I shook my head. “This is _not_ goodbye. I’ll see you later.”

     With that, he was gone, and I was the last Earthling in the cell.

     The mind-numbing monotony of imprisonment started there. Apparently, gladiator matches were fairly frequent, but prisoners were only involved if the Galra commander (I deduced the species name soon after getting my tattoo) in possession of said prisoners were invited to sit with Emperor Zarkon in his personal box. The prisoners served as the commander’s contribution to the match, a gesture of appreciation for the honor. Or something like that; I found it sickening and barbaric.  

     A sentry would stop by the cell daily with packets of nutritional goop. It was pretty flavorless, and the texture took some getting used to, but it never left me with any lingering appetite. Most of my fellow prisoners were likewise bland in personality, having lost their will and sense of identity long ago. I did learn a little from them about their homes and families and the Galra Empire as a whole. From what I gathered, the Galra occupied most of the universe; thousands of galaxies and millions of planets were under their dominion. On one occasion, I asked one of my cell mates if they had ever heard of Voltron, but I was told it was nothing more than an old legend and that I would do well not to believe in such nonsense.

     If not for the daily provision of sustenance, I would have no indication of the passage of time because we stayed in the same pitch-black cell at all times. I kept track of the number of times we received food, though, so I knew that many weeks had passed since I had been separated from my crew. If days out here could be assumed to be similar to days on Earth (I hadn’t noticed any dissonance between the timing of the food and my own circadian rhythm, so the days were probably close to the same), then it would be getting close to Thanksgiving back home. My family would have expected me to return already, and they were probably beginning to really worry. Had the Garrison done anything to figure out why they were no longer receiving our transmissions? What had they told our families? Would they think we were dead? Were they even okay after all the information the Druids got from me?

     I tried not to let my mind wander to troubling questions like that, but there wasn’t anything else to do, and I had so very many questions. Not all were about Earth, either. Where exactly was the Angorian Labor Camp? Was Sam there with Matt? How had Shiro fared as a gladiator? How was he holding up without his treatments? If he defeated that Myzax creature, he was probably fine, but people died in those fights on the regular. On that note, how long would it be before our group of prisoners was brought back to the arena? Apparently, Commander Sendak was a favorite to Emperor Zarkon, so it was more likely sooner than later. The mark on my arm would doom me to the front of the line when that day came, and there were only two possible outcomes: dying or miraculously surviving and being forced to be a regular gladiator. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to either, but I knew it was only a matter of time before I would have to face my fate.

 


	9. The Wrath of a Mother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Commander Iverson is chased from a house by a mom with a broom...

          Commander Iverson took a breath before approaching the door of the beige stucco two-story. This was going to be an unpleasant visit. He would have preferred the safety of a video call to break this news, but people even higher up than him had decided this was the type of news that the recipient deserves to get in person. Apparently, this still applied if the recipients lived in Montana. Iverson had grumbled about the distance of the trip, although he really had no right to; the low-orbit shuttle had allowed him to make the trip from the Garrison in Arizona in only two hours.

          Hat in hand, Iverson rang the doorbell. A dignified but tired-looking Native American woman in her mid-forties answered the door. “Diane Running Crane Olsen?” he ventured.

          The woman seemed to pale as she hesitantly answered, “Yes?” Mrs. Running Crane Olsen was a smart woman; Ensign Olsen’s file said she was a nurse. She was also a mother, so she certainly knew something was wrong.

          “I am Commander Iverson of the Galaxy Garrison. May I come in?” he asked, an unusual nervousness in his gruff voice.

          Mrs. Running Crane Olsen eyed him with clear concern, but held the door open further and replied, “Please.”

          Iverson entered the busy home. Four brown-haired children milled around, the oldest boy talking excitedly to his mother about pilot training, the younger girls showing off hand turkeys they had drawn at school. The mother hushed them all, telling them to behave for the company, and called to her husband. Geoffrey Olsen was a tall, fair-skinned, green-eyed man and a civil engineer. He entered the living room where Iverson was standing and stopped in his tracks. Iverson now, unfortunately, had the attention of the full family.

          “I’m afraid I’m here with troubling news,” he began, “so it may be best if everyone sat.”

          The Olsen family complied, and Iverson took another breath. “As you are all aware, the Garrison mission to Kerberos was projected to return in early to mid-November. I’m sorry to inform you that we have lost contact with your daughter’s crew. They have not returned, and we are unable to determine why.”

          There was a tense silence, but it was broken by Mrs. Running Crane Olsen. “When exactly did you lose contact with them? The Garrison had been giving us weekly updates that everything was proceeding normally.” Her voice held controlled anger.

          Iverson swallowed hard. “We received confirmation in early October that they had reached the Plutonian system, but no transmissions came in after that. Communication breakdowns are fairly commonplace in deep-space missions, so there was no reason for concern. Now, however, the crew has not returned as scheduled, and our stations on Mars and Titan have been unable to locate their craft through scans. We are remaining optimistic for now that their progress has simply been slowed by mechanical issues and that we will be able to locate them in the near future.”

          “So, what you’re saying is that you lost my kid,” Mr. Olsen stated bluntly.

          Iverson shifted uncomfortably. He was far better at yelling at cadets for flight simulator errors than sensitive conversations. “The crew has enough oxygen, water, food, and fuel to last a year in case of emergency. We are launching a probe along their flight path in the hopes of finding them. We are doing everything we can—”

          Mrs. Running Crane Olsen snapped. “Everything you can? EVERYTHING YOU CAN?! Like when you said you would do everything you could to keep us informed on the mission? Right before you lied to us for six weeks after they stopped sending transmissions? My daughter could be lost in the black void of space, and the best you can do is misinformation and a probe?” She stalked out of the living room.

          The youngest two girls looked confused, and the older boy and girl were beginning to cry. Mr. Olsen asked lowly, “Do Marcus and Renee know?”

          Iverson nodded. “We have officers informing them as we speak.”

          “How long will it take for your probe to discover any new information?” Ensign Olsen’s father asked again.

          “If we cannot find them on their way back, it could take two months or more. The probe is not designed to move as quickly as their craft.”

          Mrs. Running Crane Olsen stormed back in. “Two months?! Two months of knowing something has gone wrong, but not knowing what?” She had grabbed a broom from the kitchen, and she was now approaching Iverson with it. “Get out of my house. Get out of my house, and don’t you dare come back until you find my daughter!”

          Iverson didn’t need extra instructions. He was out of the house and in his vehicle before you could say ‘Montanan Mother Bear.’

         

          Back inside the house, Diane dropped her broom and collapsed onto the couch. Her four youngest children gathered around her. David and Lila were in tears, and Eva and Rochelle seemed not to understand what was happening. Geoffrey’s voice could be heard in the kitchen, clearly talking to somebody on the video phone. Diane held the youngest girls on her lap and began to cry.

          After a few moments, her husband reentered the living room, face grave. “I was just talking to Marcus,” he said softly as he sat and wrapped his arm around his weeping wife. “He and Renee weren’t planning on coming all the way home for Thanksgiving, but they are going to now. The officers who talked to them also said that the information is still classified. They won’t be releasing the update to the public, and we are not to tell anyone either.”

          “Is Rissa going to be okay?” David sputtered through his sobs. Marcus and Renee had never been very nice to him because he had such a soft heart, so Rissa had basically been his favorite older sibling.

          “Rissa is smart and strong. If anyone can be okay in space, she can,” Geoffrey assured, hand on his son’s shoulder. “I know she’ll be home soon.”

 


	10. Judgement Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back in space, our heroes still can't catch a break.

          A day finally came when the doors opened twice: once to provide food, and another time to round us up. The sentries pushed us into lines, me and my tattoo at the very front. My thoughts raced, and panic bubbled in my chest and throat, but I had known this day would come. We marched as we had before down the same halls (at least I thought they were the same—hard to say when they were all virtually identical) and through the same hangar into the same building. I’m sure my heartbeat was audible to everyone in the tunnel as we approached the same opening into the arena, but I tried to keep my face stoic.

          Just as before, a sentry came to the front of the crowd of prisoners and made the selection of who would fight first. No one was surprised when I was chosen, least of all me. This would probably be my last day alive.

          Just then, I noticed a dark smudge on the ground beneath me. With repulsion, I realized that no one had ever cleaned Matt’s blood off the ground. _Matt_ , I remembered. _I promised I would see_ _him later._ In the maddening darkness and loneliness of the prison cell, I had allowed myself to forget the conviction I had made to survive. There were three other people out here somewhere that I was still supposed to be keeping healthy and safe, and there were eight people at home that were counting on me to return triumphant. I could not die here today; I still had things to do. I began to mentally steel myself for the fight of my life.

          I shook myself to alertness as the sentry pulled me into the bright ring. My hair was still secured in the traditional two braids of my mother’s tribe that I had tied on Kerberos, which I was thankful for now. The sentry handed me the same type of hooked sword Shiro had snatched before his fight. It was a bit unwieldy, but in my Jujutsu training, I had been taught the basic movements of sword combat. I stood at the mark I was shown by the sentry and took a few deep breaths.

          “Distinguished guests of the Galra Empire, welcome to the first match of the day,” a voice on some sort of loudspeaker declared. “We hope you will be entertained by Emperor Zarkon’s gladiators and these contenders supplied by Commander Sendak. Today’s fights will be something of an unusual occasion. The gladiator Garkloz failed his Emperor in his most recent match and lost to a mere prisoner. As this is his one and only chance to redeem himself, this fight and any that follow after for him will be to the death.”

          _Fantastic_ , I thought, gazing across the ring to my opponent. He was about the same size as most of the Galra, but he had greenish skin and a reptilian tail. He wore armor, a luxury I did not have, and carried a sword similar to mine but larger. A tone sounded, and the crowd whooped as I was pushed by the sentry beyond the mark and into the fight zone.

          Garkloz was already charging me, so I had to think fast. I dove forward into a technique called _zenpo_ _kaiten_ just before he took a swing at me with his weapon. I managed to roll and stand back up as I had practiced so many times back home. My dive had destabilized the gladiator and broken his plan of attack, so I had an extra moment to find a proper fighting posture. He rushed me again, but this time, I was able to block his sword strike with my blade and deliver a forward kick to what on a human would be the groin. Garkloz howled in pain similar to how a human male would if dealt the same injury, and he moved away from me again. I went on the offensive for a moment, slashing at his head and then his knees. He managed to avoid both blows, but he was on the run from me. He recovered, though, and made as if to stab me. I deflected and turned away from his attack and managed to land a sword strike to his outstretched arm. He yelped again but kept ahold of his weapon.

          I felt myself tiring quickly; I hadn’t been able to exercise at my ordinary levels for about two months. If I were to live, I would need to finish this soon. Fortunately for me, the wound to Garkloz’s arm seemed to have greatly distracted him, and his next swing at me was much sloppier and slower. I blocked and landed another strike, this time on his hand, and he dropped his blade. I kicked it as far away as I could before he was on me again, now just with his superior size and strength. I grasped his arm with my left hand and placed my sword hilt at the back of his neck and moved with his attack. I then executed one of my favorite techniques, _sumi_ _gaeshi_. I basically simultaneously sat down and tripped him, sending him rolling forward. As I righted myself, I slashed at his tail for good measure. A green bit of severed tail flopped to the ground beside us. He screamed, and I nearly retched.

          I was now on one knee, sword in hand, with my opponent on his back on the ground, panting with pain. I held the tip of the sword to Garkloz’s neck as I stood. The crowd jeered as I hesitated to end the fight by killing him. He forced my hand, though, by swiping at my legs with a clawed hand. I was knocked off balance, and had I not driven my weight onto the sword and consequently his neck, he would have been on top of me once more.

          The crowd made an assortment of noises; some seemed disappointed to see the gladiator die, while others seemed to enjoy the spectacle of my victory. Sentries came to escort me out a new tunnel, and when I glanced behind me, I saw another gladiator enter the ring to fight the next unfortunate prisoner. My eyes went wide with shock.

          The gladiator was Shiro. Somehow, despite all the factors against him, he had managed to survive and succeed in the arena.The Galra still hadn’t given him any armor, but he was armed with a different style of sword—purple, straight, and energized. Another prisoner stumbled out to face him, but I was removed from the arena before I could see anything else. All down the tunnel, though, I again heard those cheers of “ _Champion_!”

          I was taken to yet another ship, where I was thrust into a small cell of my own. It was more similar to the first cell I had shared with Matt, Sam, and Shiro. There was a cot and some dim light, and this cell even had something that resembled a washbasin. I took advantage of this luxury and cleansed my hands and face. I then sat on the cot with elbows on my knees, head in my hands. There, the reality of what had just happened crashed in on me.

          Guilt. Shame. Horror. Confusion. Self-loathing. I bathed in all my own negative emotions for what felt like an eternity, trying desperately to console myself with no success. I had been put in a kill-or-be-killed situation, but was that a good enough reason to do what I had done? Was it better to live and try to make up for my actions later or die having kept my hands clean? The Galra would probably make me kill again and again; was my life worth the damage I might do as a gladiator? I tried to reassure myself with thoughts of my team and family, but I felt ashamed. Would they want a killer for a daughter, a sister, a medic?

          My self-sabotaging was finally interrupted by sentries escorting someone past my cell. I hurried to the door to see who it was, but I wasn’t able to see anything through the narrow window that let the light in before the sentries had already moved their prisoner to the cell next to mine. I looked to the wall shared by the two cells and noticed another little, barred opening above the cot. I clambered onto the cot and peered into the other cell.

          “Shiro?”

 


	11. Life as a Gladiator

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Never trust a survivor...until you find out what he did to stay alive." Kurt Vonnegut, "Bluebeard"

          “Shiro!” I exclaimed, relieved to see my friend after so many weeks.

          “Rissa?” came his shocked and hoarse voice. “What are you doing here? Was that you in the arena before me?” He rose to meet my eyes at the window.

          “Yeah, that was me,” I croaked shamefully, looking down so I wouldn’t see his expression at the news.

          “Oh, Rissa, I’m so sorry you had to do that, but I’m so glad you’re all right,” Shiro said compassionately, which was a little comforting. Not much, but it did help. “Have you seen the others in a while? How is Matt?”

          “Matt was sent away to a labor camp after you cut his leg, but I was able to patch him up. He was okay the last time I saw him. I have no idea where Sam is or how he is,” I replied.

          “Is he okay with me?” Shiro was a little more cautious with that question.

          I nodded. “He understood. We both did. He was grateful.”

          Shiro released a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness. I felt like a monster for doing that to my friend, but I figured it was better for me to go into the certain death situation since I’m already on my way out.”

          “Takashi Shirogane, you are no monster. You are a selfless hero who risked his own life on the off-chance of saving someone else. You didn’t just save Matt that day, either; you saved anyone who would have fought after him. You probably saved me. You did a good thing.” I stuck my hand through the bars, and he took it in his. “Besides, based on how you’ve done out here so far, you might very well have more time than they thought back on Earth.”

          “Thanks, Rissa. You’re a good person,” he sighed. I grimaced at the words, though.

          “Not really. I just killed another living being to save my own skin.”

          To this, Shiro laughed darkly. “And you think I haven’t had to do the same thing? I’ve been here for two months; not all of my fights have ended with both contenders leaving the ring, and I wasn’t saving anyone but myself by doing what I’ve done. If I’m no monster, neither are you.”

          I sensed a cognitive dissonance in my mind. On one hand, I had no problem seeing myself as despicable, but Shiro, who had killed even more than me, certainly couldn’t be a monster. Either we were both monsters or we both weren’t, and neither seemed right in my head.

          I sighed. “I guess most people are just harder on themselves than on other people.”

          He squeezed my hand. “Yeah, I have that problem, too. We’ll just have to help keep each other sane in here.”

          With someone to lean on, things didn’t seem quite so bleak.

          Time was easier to keep track of here. The light changed a bit with the time of day, which helped us all sleep. There were also the matches, which were daily, although most were short and were between two gladiators. Shiro was a fan-favorite, so he was retrieved from his cell almost every day. I was only taken out maybe once or twice a week, and while I held my own in the arena, there were some pretty big, nasty, experienced fighters among us, so sometimes I had my rear end handed to me. New fighters were only brought in when a regular gladiator was defeated by a prisoner, though, so the gladiators weren’t supposed to kill each other. The prisoners almost never won, so if the gladiators died too often, there wouldn’t be enough of us to be entertaining. It was still a rough life; Shiro and I both ended up with many cuts that would likely turn into scars. After each fight, we would comfort each other to try and stave off the crazy.

          My most scarring fight was the first one in which I had to battle a prisoner. She had matted fur and feline features, and she was terribly afraid. She didn’t even know how to fight. I fought her to submission quickly and easily, and I was expecting them to simply take her away. However, the fight was apparently not interesting enough, so a command came over the loudspeaker to kill the loser.

          I couldn’t do it. I let her up off the ground and threw down my weapon in defiance. There were gasps and jeers from around the arena, and a sentry approached us in the ring. The robot shot her twice—once in the chest and another time right in the face with a laser blaster. She didn’t die right away; she suffered on the ground for several minutes, gasping as she slowly succumbed to the shock of her burns. The sentry then retrieved my weapon and returned it to me. More prisoners were sent into the ring, and the following fights were to the death. I wouldn’t ever be able to forget the faces of those innocent prisoners as I ended them as mercifully as I could.

         That night, I stood on my cot, forehead against the bars that separated me from Shiro, wracked with sobs. He stuck his hand through the opening and gently rubbed my shoulder. He didn’t say a word until my tears had run dry, at which time he told me that the same thing had happened to him and that he still thought I was a good person. I was further punished for my disobedience by not receiving food for the next three days, but they kept me alive. Shiro tried to share his food with me, but I wouldn’t take it.

        “You need it more than I do,” I said. “You have to fight almost every day. When they want me to fight again, they’ll go back to feeding me.” I was right, too, because things returned to a ‘normal’ routine soon enough.

        It had been another two months or so since I had become a gladiator, and the changes that had occurred in me were unbelievable. While I was mentally pretty fragile, I had physically become very strong. The sentries took us once a week to bath areas to help reduce the smell of the cells, and I could hardly recognize my own body when I washed. I had lost a lot of softness, and my arms especially were much more muscular than they ever had been before. I continued to keep my hair in braids because it was all I could do with months of tangles and no way to brush it. There were no mirrors either, so I never got to see my face. Something was telling me that I really didn’t want to. Even if I ever got free, I began to doubt that my family would ever recognize me again.

 


	12. Declared Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Garrison is honestly a bit of a disaster...

          The Olsen house finally got to be quiet around 9:30 pm. The girls had gone to bed, and David was just finishing up his homework. Geoffrey was reading upstairs, and Diane had finished a video call to Renee moments ago.

          The past few months had been very tense for their family, so quiet moments like this were a welcome blessing. None of their friends or coworkers really asked where Rissa was; everyone knew she had been living and working near the Garrison for several years. Still, Rissa had never missed a chance to come home for the holidays, so enduring Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s without knowing where she was had been difficult on everyone. Now it was the end of January. All the kids were back in school, trying to function as normally as possible, and Diane was simply emotionally exhausted.

          She sank into the couch and absentmindedly flipped on the television. The local news was mind-numbingly dull, which was exactly what Diane needed. A few moments later, though, the reporter on screen stopped in the middle of her sentence, touching her hand to her earpiece.

          “We will be right back with more local stories, but we have just received an announcement on a more global scale,” the woman ad-libbed nervously before the screen cut to a new story. Footage of a launching spacecraft appeared, and Diane immediately called to her husband to come downstairs. She didn’t even need to read the captions on the screen to recognize where that footage came from. That was Rissa’s ship from the Kerberos mission.

          “The Galaxy Garrison mission to the distant moon of Kerberos is missing, and all crew members are believed to be dead,” a reporter’s voice announced just in time for Geoffrey to hear as he entered the room. “The Galaxy Garrison has said the crash was presumably caused by pilot error. It is, indeed, a sad day for all humanity.”

          Both Geoffrey and Diane continued to stare at the television screen as photographs of Lieutenant Shirogane, Commander Holt, and Matthew appeared.

          “All…? But—Rissa…” Geoffrey stammered, voice and face stricken.

          Diane rose from the couch and went straight to the video phone in the kitchen. It took three tries, but a flustered Commander Iverson finally answered.

          “Mrs. Running Crane Olsen. I suppose you’ll have a few questions,” the commander said sheepishly, not looking directly at the screen.

          “Oh, I have a _lot_ of questions,” Diane fumed on the verge of tears. “First of all, I know I said not to come back until you found my daughter, but is there a reasonable explanation for why I was just updated on the search by the television instead of the Garrison?”

          Iverson sighed. “There was an unauthorized leak to the media. We are looking into it, but we were planning on telling you in person in the morning. I’m sorry for the extra pain finding out like this must have caused.”

          “That’s another thing. I’m not entirely sure what I just learned from that broadcast. It said that all crew members were believed to be dead,” she almost choked on the word, “but Rissa wasn’t pictured with the rest of her crew. What exactly happened to her?”

          Another sigh. “It seems the leak came from a lower-ranking officer at the main Garrison. Even though the two institutions work mostly as a single unit, the Garrison Medical Division is technically a separate entity. Whoever released the information to the press must not have had access to records on medical personnel. Unfortunately, we have no reason to believe Ensign Olsen was not among the victims of the crash. I’m so sorry.”

          Diane didn’t respond before hanging up. She continued to stare in silence at the deadened screen for a moment. Geoffrey, who had been silently standing at the kitchen entrance, approached and caught his wife as she turned into him, releasing her muffled cries of anguish into his chest. Silent tears streamed down his own reddening face as he rocked her back and forth.

          Neither Diane nor Geoffrey went to work the next morning, and none of the kids went to school. Everyone spent most of their time in front of the video phone talking to relatives, especially Renee and Marcus. According to Marcus, the Garrison was in complete turmoil since Lieutenant Shirogane had been an instructor and Matt had been a classmate to a third of the current cadets. Classes had been canceled entirely. A memorial service for the four fallen astroexplorers was being planned, and the Olsen family needed to make travel plans to attend. The doorbell occasionally rang, and each time someone answered the door, they were met by a well-meaning friend or neighbor with a casserole or bouquet.

 

          The memorial service was held a week later at the Galaxy Garrison in Arizona. High-ranking Garrison personnel came to express condolences and attempt to re-inspire the massive crowd. The Olsen family was front and center with the other kin of the lost, but Diane had a difficult time being very attentive to the words being spoken. She just stared blankly at the people gathered, a mass of black interspersed with Garrison uniforms. She clung to her husband and oldest son for support when the Admiral presented her with a medal for her daughter. At that point, the ceremony was briefly interrupted by a dark-haired cadet—probably just a bit younger than Marcus—who conspicuously pushed his way out of the crowd and left in an obvious fit of grief. No one followed him, and the solemn but painfully empty service continued.

 

          Cadet Renee Olsen returned to the memorial site after her family had gone home. It was February, which back home would have been freezing, but here, it was warm outside with a gentle breeze. The service had been nice enough, but the grandiose speech of some Admiral and the hundreds of people in attendance had left Renee wanting some more personal time with the memorial for her sister.

          Renee had managed to get a pretty good look at the memorial during the ceremony. It was simple and subtle—something Renee appreciated since she lived at the Garrison and would probably have to see it frequently—a bronze plaque placed in the main Garrison lobby and engraved with the names of the lost crew members. The dates of the mission were also listed.

          As she entered the now quiet lobby, Renee realized that she was not the only person who had the idea to come back for some privacy. A girl close to her age stood by the plaque. She looked oddly familiar, and after a moment, Renee realized she had seen the girl at the launching of the Kerberos mission. The first-year cadet approached cautiously.

          “Are you a Holt?” Renee finally decided to ask. The other girl whirled around in surprise.

          “Oh! I didn’t think anyone else was here. Yes, I’m Katie,” the girl stated.

          “I’m Renee Olsen. Ensign Olsen was my sister,” Renee introduced herself, but Katie had looked back to the plaque and didn’t say anything. Renee shifted a little uncomfortably and continued to speak. “I only started at the Garrison this year, so I never knew your brother, but I’ve heard he was a great guy. A lot of the other students in communications technology really looked up to—”  

          “Stop!” Katie interjected. “Stop talking about them like they’re dead!”

          The outburst shocked Renee. She wanted the crew to be alive as much as anyone, but if they had crashed their ship billions of miles into the cold void of space, what hope was there?

          Katie sighed. “I’m sorry, obviously this is hard for you, too. It’s just—don’t you think it’s even a little suspicious how little they’ve told us about what happened? Just—crash. Pilot error. Probably dead. Move along, please. I just think there’s something they’re hiding.”

          The gears were spinning in Renee’s head. The Garrison _had_ been awfully vague on the details of her sister’s supposed death. She had been a little busy grieving to give it any thought, though.

          “What would they be hiding? And why?” she finally asked.

          “I don’t know,” Katie said, shaking her head. “It just doesn’t feel right, and I intend to figure out what’s going on.”

          Renee thought a moment before she spoke again. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

          Katie turned to face Renee, a shadow of a smile dancing on her face. “Well, if you’re feeling up to it right now, I could use a distraction to help me get into Iverson’s computer.”

          “What you are suggesting is technically treason,” Renee pointed out. She then placed her hand on the plaque, gently touching her sister’s name. “But for Rissa? I’m sure I could come up with something.”

 


	13. February 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prison bonding and death matches in space. This is a really depressing fanfic to go with a really depressing series.

          The weeks wore on. So many days had passed that I may have lost track if not for the tally marks I started scratching into the floor with a spoon I snagged. It was probably getting close to the end of February on Earth, and somehow, in the mess that my mind had become, I was able to recall that Shiro’s birthday was approaching for only the sixth time in his life. I brought it up to Shiro, and we agreed that it was both hopeful and heartbreaking. On one hand, it gave us something to look forward to, but on the other, it was a horrible thing to think of getting older in Galra prison, even if it were just 24.

          We had talked about an escape plan many times, but so far, we couldn’t come up with anything viable. We still knew too little about the layout of the ship we were on to navigate without an escort of sentries. Even if we could get out of our cells, we wouldn’t make it far. We also had no idea where in the universe we were, so getting home would be an issue.

          So, we waited, relying heavily on each other to keep from losing it. I knew I would be way far gone if I didn’t have Shiro, and I tried extra hard to be strong and be the same anchor for him. He told me about his love for flying, the thrill and freedom he found in it, how it helped him feel like less of a dead man walking. I confided in him that while I felt much the same way about flying, I had a crippling fear of heights and some fairly severe anxiety, which made the gravity-free environment of space preferable to Earth’s atmosphere. He talked about Keith Kogane, his mentee and a protegee pilot at the Garrison, the closest thing to a brother he had. I talked about my many siblings—their ambitions, dispositions, and what they meant to me. He lamented the way his relationship with his ex-fiancé, Adam, had ended, how he would likely never see the man he had loved for years again. I told him about the crushes I’d had on boys and girls alike, things I couldn’t tell my family. We had a good laugh about us two queers. 

         “Space gays?” I asked.

         “Space gays,” Shiro confirmed.

          “So Sam was the only straight person on the mission,” I mused with a rare, out-of-practice smile.

         “Probably, but we don’t technically know that Sam was straight. It very well may have been a queers-only event.” Shiro managed to laugh.

          In this way—baring our souls to each other—we were able to keep a grip on who we were. We stayed human, and we stayed us.

          I was only in the gladiator cells for around three months total, but somewhere during that time, I realized Shiro had become the best friend I had ever had in my life. That friendship was profound and real, a connection and stability I had craved even back on Earth, and I never wanted it to go away.  

          Then, that fateful day came. I’ll call it February 29 because I really couldn’t tell the exact date and because February 29 doesn’t usually exist. It was also the day time stopped making sense for us human gladiators.

          Shiro had sustained a large gash across the bridge of his nose a week or so prior, and the cut simply wasn’t healing normally. It remained open and oozing, and while it was hard to tell exactly what the fluid was in the dim light, I suspected it was pus—the tell-tale sign of acute infection. I soaked my hand-drying rag in water and stood on my cot at the barred opening between my cell and Shiro’s, dabbing at and squeezing the wound in an attempt to flush it out. Shiro was a model patient and kept very still, but the process obviously pained him.

          “Sorry, Shiro. I’m almost done,” I apologized while continuing to rinse.

          “No, I’m grateful. Without you, I might have lost my whole face,” he insisted.

          “Well, even with me here, if we didn’t have this little window between us, there wouldn’t be anything I could do to help. We’re lucky,” I said ironically.

          “What do you think they are even for?” Shiro asked.

          I glanced around him to the window on the opposite cell wall, then behind me to the one on my other wall. “Ventilation and airflow, maybe? They do try to keep the smell to a minimum.” I hopped down from the cot to clean out the rag and rinse the gash one more time. Upon returning, Shiro went on.

          “Really, thank you for looking out for me.”

          “Of course I’m looking out for you. You’re my friend, found family.”

          “I mean always. You came on this mission, uprooted the very beginning of your adult life, for the sole purpose of making sure I didn’t break down. Now you’ve been kidnapped and traumatized by aliens, and you’re still taking care of me. I’m really, really grateful.” 

          “Like I said, you’re my friend. If me being here helps you stay in good shape, I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I said matter-of-factly. “That reminds me, though. How is your arm?”

          “Decent, all things considered,” he sighed, “but not perfect, of course.”

          “Are you doing your physical therapy exercises?”

          “Of course.”

          “Good man.”

          Both our cell doors suddenly opened, startling us both. My sentry grabbed ahold of me and took me out into the hall, where Shiro was also being lead along by a robotic guard. There were a few other sentries leading other gladiators as well. Down the halls we had come to know, they took us back to the arena for the day’s matches.

          The sentries were aided by a few Galra soldiers as they split us up, each fighter set to enter the ring when directed from a different tunnel. I accepted a sword once more from a sentry, and I breathed deeply in preparation for my gate to open. I had committed to never becoming what they wanted me to be, but there were certain things it was easier to accept than resist if I wanted to stay alive. Taking a beating from or handing a beating out to another gladiator was something I could handle until Shiro and I could figure out something better. When I was ushered into the arena, however, I was totally unprepared for what I found there, or rather, who.

          My opponent was Shiro.

          “Greetings, distinguished guests! Today’s first match is an exciting one. These fighters are from the same distant, primitive planet. That’s right. Our Champion will take on one of his own.”

          I was sick. First of all, this was Shiro. He had become my favorite person. We had sparred every day for five weeks, but that was always a situation of understanding and consent. I could never attack him with a sword. Second, Shiro had always been a better _jujutsuka_ than me, and after the Myzax fight, I was certain that if he tried, he could seriously harm me without much effort. Despite having been punished before and knowing I would likely be killed for my repetitive defiance, I threw down my sword in clear disobedience.

          “I won’t do it!” I screamed at anyone who could hear. “I’ve already done so many things in this ring that I never wanted to do. Punish me all you like, but I will not do this!”

          To my horror, Shiro followed my lead. “If you punish her, punish me, too. I also refuse to fight this fight.” He approached me, stood by my side, and jabbed his sword into the ground. Out the corner of his mouth, he hissed at me. “I would have let you beat me. You should have saved yourself.”

          “I’m not going anywhere without you,” I responded shortly.

          Sentries and soldiers entered the ring, armed with blaster guns and swords respectively. They made their way to us, but Shiro retrieved both our swords and handed me mine. “Get ready,” he warned. “We are going to show them we mean business.”

          For some reason, laser blasts are slower than bullets. We were able to slash and disable all the blasters and their mechanical wielders. Shiro moved behind me, positioning himself with his back to mine as the Galra foot soldiers moved in with blades drawn. This fight we were giving was probably more exciting than any gladiator match for several weeks, but the crowd didn’t seem to be happy about it. Weird.

          We incapacitated most of the soldiers easily, but one caught me by surprise with a syringe to the thigh. I gasped and punched him, but only a few seconds passed before I was on my knees, vision blurry and fading.

          “Rissa!” cried Shiro, but in that moment of distraction, it seemed a soldier had managed to hit him with the sedative as well. I was on my way out by then, though, so I couldn’t be entirely sure. I slid to the ground on my side, and everything went dark.

 


	14. I Like to DO Science, Not BE Science

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I think the title says it all...

_Stupid Druids and their stupid, freaky labs with freaky, stupid tables to strap people to._

          I may have been feeling a little bitter as I regained consciousness in the same lab in which our crew had been interrogated when we arrived. The panels were now reclined, such that I was strapped to something resembling an operating table. Ordinarily, I loved operating tables; I used them to save people. This time, however, I had a sinking suspicion that this wasn’t going to be the same experience.

          Sounds were still a bit muffled for me so soon after waking up, so I didn’t hear it when they entered the room, but I could _feel_ it. There was a malevolence to them that I recognized from our first encounter. Haggar and a Druid came into my view ominously above me. Even at this angle, I couldn’t make out a face for the Druid, but Haggar’s face was clear and examining me studiously.

          “What do you want this time?” I spat, sass miraculously overcoming my terror. An amused smirk split the Priestess’s blue face.

          “You Earthlings have many impressive and useful qualities, but you are difficult to control. We are going to see what we can do to change that.”

          I struggled a bit against my restraints, but I didn’t get anywhere, so I exhaled loudly as I directed my gaze straight to the ceiling. “Where’s Shiro?” I hissed the question.

          “The Champion? Oh, I have plans for him. Don’t you fret.” Haggar’s reassurance wasn’t very reassuring. It didn’t answer my question either, but at least I knew he was alive.

          “I’m rather glad you are here, you know. Without you, my next project may not have been possible. Not only have you given me a base of knowledge to work with, but your female biology will be of great benefit to us.”

          _THAT_ was a terrifying statement. I squirmed more violently than before. “I swear, if you _touch_ me, I’ll…”

          I didn’t get to finish my poorly-thought-out, empty threat because the Druid jabbed a needle into my neck. Instantly, I couldn’t move a muscle below my face voluntarily. I was still breathing, and I could still hear the blood pulsing through my head. I could even blink and move my eyes around, but I couldn’t speak or struggle anymore. There was an odd numbness in my limbs, but they weren’t totally without feeling.

          Haggar and her assistant set to work, the first investigation or experiment of many. I could never see much of what they were doing because of my partial paralysis, but they did an awful lot cutting into my abdomen. The injection dulled the pain of the incisions, but I could still feel hands and instruments moving things around every time they brought me to that lab. When I wasn’t being worked on, I spent my time alone in a dark cell. I received all my nutrition from an IV-like drip in the lab, so I didn’t have daily food to help me keep track of time. I was also often completely anesthetized, probably for even more invasive surgeries and experiments, so my grip on time and reality slipped away entirely. Needles, tubes of pinkish fluid, scans, voices, pain from the times no anesthesia or numbing was used, my own nightmares—it all ran together.

          There was one occasion that stuck out in my mind, though. Instead of preparing me for surgery or experimentation, the Druids hooked me back up to the electrodes they had used to extract my medical training.

          “Didn’t get enough last time?” I croaked, hardly able to form words.

          “There is something wrong with the Champion. His body is deteriorating. We must learn everything you know about his condition, and this is the best way to be sure you are giving us everything we need.”

          “No doctor-patient confidentiality out here, I guess,” I grumbled before the pain began. 

          I didn’t see Shiro often—it didn’t seem that we were ever awake at the same time—but he could occasionally be found unconscious on a separate table in the lab while I was there. The gash on his face had scarred prominently, and as time went on, I noticed the front portion of his black hair gradually become white. I wondered if the same thing were happening to my hair. I wasn’t worried, simply curious. I had much bigger problems. Whatever was being done to me—whatever mysticism or drugs the Druids were using on me—it was sapping away my will to fight and desensitizing me to my fears. I came to feel nothing.

          There wasn’t any obvious reason why they stopped experimenting on me. Maybe they had learned everything they wanted. Maybe I had come to bore them or had become too broken. Maybe they received orders to work on a different project. All I could tell was that when they led me out of the lab for the final time, I caught a glimpse of a few disturbing things. First, I saw an unconscious Shiro once more, strapped to a panel in a more or less upright position. His right arm was nothing more than a stump severed a bit below the shoulder. I also spotted a Druid closing a wall panel that obscured tubes holding things that looked suspiciously like human embryos. That may not have been real, though. I couldn’t be sure at the time.

          I didn’t really register much of my journey to my next destination; I didn’t even know where I was headed. I was technically conscious and had been re-mobilized enough to walk by myself, but my mind was not with me. After some time—no idea how much—I found myself in a large communal cell with many bunks. The light was very different from the ships I had been on since our capture. This was more natural.

          I heard an unrecognizable voice say, “This one just came from the Druids, so it may be a few days before she’s productive. We’ll get rid of her if she takes too long to be useful, but we’ll let her be for now.”

          “Vrepit sa, sir,” came another voice, and then I was alone again, without even any thoughts to keep me company.

          Darkness eventually came, and the cell filled with unfamiliar beings and voices. Artificial light illuminated their pre-sleep activities, and even with the haze of my mind, I realized that someone had taken a seat next to me on my bunk. I flinched when a hand touched my shoulder, but I relaxed a bit when I heard the voice that accompanied it.

          “Rissa?” Matt Holt asked.


	15. I Can't Believe Humans Were Ever Okay With Slavery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Humans are kind of terrible sometimes, but we've made more human rights progress recently than the Galra ever have...or would it be Galra rights for them? Whatever...slavery is evil.

          It was about two days before I was able to respond to anything Matt said to me. He kept trying to coax me into eating, but I just couldn’t. I stayed in the bunk where Matt had situated me the first night, not moving or speaking. The haze cleared, though, and my mind and emotions came back to me. I even found the strength to sit up in my bunk by the time Matt returned the third night.

          “How long has it been?” I rasped, not having spoken since my last interaction with the Druids. Matt sat beside me with a packet of standard Galra prison fare.

          “I’ve been here a little more than six months. I think,” he replied. “It’s good to see you more like yourself.”

          My brain could barely handle the math, but that meant I had been with the Druids for less than two months. It had felt like years. At the same time, though, it seemed impossible that we had already been away from Earth for between seven and eight months.

          “Is your dad here? I haven’t seen him, but I could have just not realized,” I asked again.

          Matt sighed. “No, he was here, but they moved him a few months ago. He figured out a way to upgrade some of the mining equipment, so they took him away to put his head to better use than digging here. I don’t know where, though.”

          “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

          He turned to me with a grim smile. “Well, it’s like you said. We’ll figure it out. If you don’t mind me asking, where have you been this whole time? And why did they send you here?”

          I threw my legs over the side of the bunk and rested my elbows on my thighs, head hanging. “For the first little while, I was still there on Sendak’s ship, but then they sent me to the gladiator ring. I eked out a win, so they kept me around for the fights. Shiro was there,” I found myself anxious thinking about where he was now, “and they tried to get us to fight, but we wouldn’t do it. They took us out of the ring and did a lot of freaky experiments on us. I’m not sure why they stopped and sent me here. I don’t know if Shiro’s still there either or if they sent him somewhere else.”

          “Wow, now I’m sorry, too,” Matt responded. We were both quiet for a moment before he spoke again. “You really need to eat something. You haven’t had anything since you got here.” He handed me the packet of goop, which I reluctantly accepted.

          I squeezed a bit of the flavorless mass into my mouth, and with great effort, swallowed it. I realized that I had made a mistake only moments later when I found myself vomiting into a grimy communal sink along the cell wall, all my roommates watching me.

          “The Druids didn’t feed me during the experiments; they gave me an IV drip. I haven’t had anything in my stomach for several weeks,” I explained to Matt weakly as I returned to my bunk. “I’m probably going to need to start with water.”

          Matt finished his food and rinsed the packet out in a sink. He filled it with water and returned it to me. I sipped slowly and laid back down.

          “So, this is the Angorian Labor Camp,” I mused after a moment. “Funny how we all ended up here when the Galra Empire covers most of the universe.”

          “Actually, there was a plague of some kind here before we were captured, so this camp has been in desperate need of laborers. We get a lot of new workers regularly,” Matt explained.

          “Ah. So, not funny,” I said, continuing to sip the water. It had an unusual flavor, but I supposed that should be expected on some alien planet lightyears away from my home.

          “Nope, and since there aren’t enough workers here, everyone has to do a lot more. The mining is backbreaking.”

          “Fabulous,” I muttered. “Still, I guess it’s better than torture and being driven crazy by creepy space Druids.”

          Matt looked at me with concern. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”

          “No, not yet,” I sighed. A warden entered our cell at that moment and ordered everyone into the bunks. Matt stood to go to his designated place, giving me a gentle look as he went. The lights went out, and although I hadn’t moved much for a long time, I was exhausted. Sleep came, thankfully, very quickly.

          My dreams were jumbled and disconcerting, but at least when I woke, I could distinguish reality from the things that occurred in my mind in my sleep. I was able to stomach a tiny bit of food in the morning, but due to low blood sugar, I could barely stand. Matt had to convince the warden that I still wasn’t ready to work, but soon I was alone in the cell once more. I continued to slowly feed myself; my life would shortly depend on getting back my strength.

          There were small windows placed high in the walls of the cell, letting in natural light. I still couldn’t stand well, and even if I could, the windows were out of my reach, so I still couldn’t see anything of my new surroundings. The cell door on the opposite wall was of the windowless, sliding variety found on Sendak’s ship, so there was no way to see the rest of the facility. The day all alone proved to be very dull, but I preferred dull to “exciting” by Galra standards anyway. I felt almost normal by the time the workers returned and the artificial lights turned on to compensate for the receding daylight.

          Matt came to me, grimy and sweating, and after three days of being at the camp, I finally got a good look at him. His hair was a bit longer, and he looked quite a lot older after just six or seven months. He was about the same size as before, if not just a bit taller, but it was clear that he had built some muscle.

          “I never asked. How is your leg?” I inquired.

          Matt sat once more on the edge of my bunk and rolled up the stretchy black pant leg on his unitard. “Well, like you predicted, it’s pretty ugly, but it’s closed, uninfected, and painless now, so it’ll do.” The scar was quite large, larger than the one I had noticed on Shiro’s face, but it looked like it had healed as well as could be hoped. I sighed in relief.

          “Mission accomplished, then. I’m just glad they didn’t take your leg; the Galra don’t seem to be emotionally attached to limbs at all.” I shuddered thinking of Shiro’s stump arm.

          The rest of the night was quiet, and when morning came, I was judged to be strong enough to join the other prisoners for the day’s work.

          When Matt said “backbreaking,” there was no exaggeration. Even though the camp’s laborers were the weaker of the Empire’s prisoners, many of the alien species around us were naturally much stronger than humans. This was especially true for the Galra overseers, but Matt and I were expected to dig, pick, and carry just as much rock and ore as the others. For the first few days, I was genuinely afraid I would die, either from overexertion or from some accident because the mines were not built with 20-year-old human women in mind. I found a little reassurance in the fact that scrawny little Matt was still alive, but I worried anyway. Each night, I tried desperately and unsuccessfully to stretch before sleeping to ward off soreness. Each morning, I hobbled out of my bunk like someone four times my age.

          My troublemaker tattoo finally caught up to me once more at that camp. The overseers paid extra special attention to me, so when I stumbled or moved too slowly, they were swift to punish me with shocks from a cattle-prod-like device. Generally, my prisoner’s uniform protected me from the worst of the shocks, but sometimes, they would touch bare skin, leaving small burn marks. To add insult to injury, the Galra berated me verbally on the regular.

          “Not so troublesome now, eh?”

          “Looks like it’s true; the Galra Empire can break _anyone_.”

          These comments didn’t bother me as much as they may have at the beginning of my imprisonment, but they certainly made it more difficult to recover and perform my labors at expected standards. Every time I earned a new burn, Matt would apologize profusely; he still felt guilty that I was being punished for saving his life months ago. I assured him that for one thing, saving him was my job, and for another, he had become “found family,” so I was glad to take on the consequences of keeping him safe(ish).

          I was reminded of the stories of Earth’s slavery around 200 years ago, the concentration and internment camps of a mere 100 years ago. Earth was still far from perfect, but humanity had come a long way in the last few decades, so those atrocities were things I had only learned of in school. It was appalling, and not just because I was the victim of this situation. Unlike the Holocaust, the overseers were not actively trying to kill the prisoners (thankfully), but they definitely were getting some sickening form of pleasure from beating and belittling the workers. We generally received enough food to function, but even that could be taken away for the smallest of missteps.

          The longer I spent in Galra captivity, the more I learned that “bleak” comes in many different forms. I began to wonder if I would have to overcome all those forms in order to stay alive.

 


	16. Expelled for Teen Spirit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm so punny...  
> Also, Katie Holt is diabolical...

          “I can’t believe you got yourself banned for life from Garrison property!” Renee Olsen held her head in her hands as she caught up with Katie over milkshakes at a Flagstaff diner. “You said you were good at hacking! I covered for you to get in! How did you even get caught?”

          “It was stupid of me, I know,” Katie sighed. “I hit the motherload of information, and I lost track of how much time I had.”

          “Yeah, about that. What sort of information? You were really vague on the phone when you asked me to meet you here.”

          Katie glanced around, checking the girls’ surroundings before continuing. The diner was a pretty good place to meet; the booths were private, and not many customers came to the establishment. Still, it was far from quiet. Between the noise from the kitchen and the blaring of the old-fashioned jukebox, there was a healthy barrier to being overheard. Katie leaned closer to Renee for good measure.

          “There was no crash on Kerberos.”

          “ _WHAT?!?!_ ” Renee’s shocked response was a little too loud. Katie glared at her and looked around again. Satisfied that no one had noticed, she went on.

          “The video taken by the probes they sent out doesn’t show any evidence of a crash. There is some ruined equipment on the surface, sure, but the ship is nowhere to be found on Kerberos, Pluto, or any of the other moons. There is no impact site anywhere in that system either, but there are tracks on Kerberos that indicate that the lunar rover was used.”

          Renee closed her eyes and took a breath, trying to process all of what her new friend had told her. “So, you’re saying that they landed safely, got out, and got to work. Then something happened, and they got a little roughed up. And now they’re just _gone_? _Vanished_?”

          “Well, that makes it sound a little nutty, but yeah, that’s exactly what the evidence says at the moment,” Katie reasoned. “The Garrison is probably trying to cover for the fact that they have no idea what happened to the missing crew. Saying they are dead because of human error is a lot easier than admitting that something outside the Garrison’s control or understanding happened.”

          “How are we going to figure out what _did_ happen?” Renee asked. “We can’t get into their computer system anymore. I’ve said it before; I’m good with tech, but I’m nowhere _near_ good enough to hack the Garrison. It’s a closed system, too; you won’t be able to get in remotely.”

          The newly-turned 15-year-old across from Renee smirked, and the young cadet began to pray that whatever diabolical plan Katie had running around in her big brain would work better than the last.

 

          A month later, Renee found herself in the Garrison barracks office.

          “Cadet. How can I help you?” the motherly woman behind the reception desk asked formally.

          Renee placed a thin file on the desk. “I have a roommate request for next school year, ma’am.”

          The woman picked up and read the forms in the folder, eyeing them all critically. “Pidge Gunderson. You know, we usually do not permit cadets of opposite genders to room together,” she pointed out, glancing at Renee over reading glasses.

          “I’m aware, ma’am, but I was hoping I could have an exception. You see, Pidge is a friend from back home, a first-year student in the fall. He’s like a brother to me, and with what happened to my sister and with my actual brother graduating—” Renee paused a little to sell her story “—I—I could just really use someone I know as my roommate next year.” She looked down in only partly-feigned discomfort.

          The older female’s face softened immensely. “Oh, dear. In that case, I’m sure we can arrange an exception for you. It’s a small enough thing to do if it helps you cope better than that Kogane boy.”

          Renee was unaware of anything to do with Cadet Keith Kogane, a fighter pilot in the year ahead of her. “What happened with Cadet Kogane?” she blurted.

          The woman simply shook her head. “It’s really not your concern. I’ve said too much. Don’t worry, though. I’ll get this request pushed through for you.”

          Renee thanked the woman and headed straight for Marcus’s dorm room, rapping loudly on the door upon arriving. The 17-year-old could be heard urging his roommate to put on a shirt, but he soon answered the door.

          “What’s up, Renee?”

          “Do you know what happened with Keith Kogane?” Renee asked her brother bluntly.

          “Ooooh, you didn’t hear? I guess you wouldn’t have, since you’re not a pilot and they are trying to keep it kind of quiet,” Marcus began to ramble. “So, the guy is, like, a prodigy pilot, right? Highest scores in the simulator since Lieutenant Shirogane was a student. He got to work with us third-year cadets sometimes.” Renee nodded in understanding, urging her brother to continue. “But, like a month or two ago, he started doing really badly in all the exercises. It was obvious his head wasn’t in it. After one _really_ bad simulator run, Commander Iverson confronted him about it. Basically, got in his face and told him to get his head out of his rear. Kogane flipped out. He straight-up decked the commander in the face, yelling all sorts of choice words about Iverson being a heartless piece of garbage. The rest of the class was canceled, and Iverson had to go to the hospital for his eye.”

          Renee let out a low whistle. “Yeesh, that’s intense.”

          “Yeah, they kicked Kogane out of the Garrison for it.”

          Renee thought for a moment. “Wasn’t he the same guy that freaked out and ran out of the memorial service?”

          The amused grin that had adorned Marcus’s face disappeared. “Holy cow, you’re right. Wow, suddenly that story isn’t funny anymore. Keith was pretty close with Lieutenant Shirogane. I guess I hadn’t realized he was probably dealing with the same things as us.”

          Renee nodded somberly, thinking of the crazy plan she and Katie were going to execute in response to the Kerberos disaster. “Everyone copes differently, I guess.”

          “Yeah, good thing neither of us have done anything psycho like assaulting a senior officer.” Renee almost laughed at that misinformed statement, but she stopped herself.

          “Do you know when the family is going to get here for your graduation?” she changed the subject.

          Marcus became a bit more cheerful again. “Next weekend. They won’t be staying long since the rest of the kids aren’t out of school yet.”

          Renee was quiet for a moment. “She’d be proud of you, you know.”

          Marcus sighed. “I would hope so.”

          “Well, this was a lovely chat, but I’ve got to go get ready for an exam. I’ll see you later,” Renee said as she began to walk away from Marcus’s door frame.

          “Bye.”

          _Kicked out of the Garrison,_ she thought as she walked. The same thing could happen to her if anyone found out about her involvement in Katie’s hacking sprees or about the upcoming “Pidge Gunderson” plan. Still, the families of the Kerberos crew members, the whole _world_ for that matter, had a right to know what really happened out there. She couldn’t give up now.

 


	17. Liberation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thankfully, most bad things also come to an end...

For all its unpleasantries, life at the labor camp was far less confusing and emotionally scarring than my previous imprisonment arrangements. We could see sunlight, we didn’t have to kill anyone, and no one was digging through our internal organs or dismembering us. It was rough, but it was simple.

I never did get around to telling Matt about what happened to Shiro’s arm; it seemed like an unnecessarily unpleasant detail that he would do better not knowing. My teen companion did constantly try to get me to share more of what had happened to me while we were separated, but I kept my mouth shut. I knew very well that internalizing my traumas would only do me harm, but I couldn’t bring myself to dump my baggage on Matt.

“I really don’t feel anything about any of it. The Druids took that away from me, and even if they didn’t, we’re really not safe yet. I don’t think my brain would let me process everything even if I wanted to,” I would tell him. He wasn’t entirely convinced, but I was stubborn, so he eventually stopped pushing.

We estimated that when I arrived at the camp, it would have been sometime near the end of April on Earth. Based on Matt’s ongoing count of the days he had been there, we guessed it was getting closer to June. The stony planet that housed the camp followed a different cycle of seasons, but enough time had passed that I noticed it was beginning to get colder. As time went on, my mentality about our imprisonment evolved. I was still fervently committed to staying alive, reuniting my crew, and keeping everyone safe, but I was beginning to accept that my goals were looking a little far-fetched. It would take a miracle to get away from our captors.

Matt and I had discussed escape in hushed tones on occasion, but it seemed even more impossible than escape from the gladiator cells. The planet was uninhabited and barren of life besides the mining complex, so although there were not enough guards to personally watch each prisoner, there was nowhere viable to which one could run. The only ships that came in or out of the facility were for the ore we mined. The only way I could see off the planet would be by sneaking away from work and onto a cargo ship and using an escape pod to leave the ship once it left orbit. It was an incredibly risky plan, especially for someone with a troublemaker mark, and timing the escape would be difficult, if not impossible. We kept the idea in the back of our minds, but it looked unlikely that we would ever bring it to fruition.

Our greatest stroke of luck was that we never had to.

The night started out the same as the many that came before it. All the prisoners were escorted out of the mine and back to the cells by a mix of foot soldiers and robotic sentries. Matt and I had about thirty cellmates, and all of these filed into the room without much of a struggle. Everyone set about getting ready to sleep as the cell door was secured behind us. I washed my face at a sink, and I used a rag to try and clean my sweaty armpits. The camp laborers also bathed and received clean clothes roughly weekly, but the “baths” were more like degrading communal hose-downs. As a result, all the prisoners, myself included, smelled pretty bad. Additionally, although I hadn’t seen a mirror since our capture, I could tell that the sweat and arid atmosphere had wreaked havoc on my acne. It was a little painful, but aside from that, I had come to not care much. I simply rinsed myself and headed to my bunk to refuel with a food-goo packet.

That was when the explosions started. Nearly all the occupants of the cell jumped, and the whine of an alarm began somewhere out in the hall. I immediately looked to Matt. “What do you think that is?” I wondered aloud as bright flashes of light could be seen faintly from the high windows of the cell.

“Give me a boost. I’ll take a look,” he replied, and we moved over to the nearest window. I was still a little taller than Matt, but he was still quite a bit lighter than me, so I got down on hands and knees to serve as his step-stool. Once he could see outside, he gasped.

“It’s an air strike! Someone is attacking the mines!” he exclaimed as he jumped down from my back. My eyes widened in surprise as I rose to my feet. Who would possibly be bold or stupid enough to attack a Galra base, even if it were just a mining installation?

A much closer, louder explosion split the air, and the wall of the sliding cell door blew in with a bang, spraying us all with dust and small bits of shrapnel. A masked figure entered through the haze of smoke and inquired hastily, “Shikri?”

One of our fellow prisoners turned to the intruder and exclaimed, “Te-Osh? Is that you? What’s going on?”

The newcomer continued to speak rapidly in a low but feminine-sounding voice. “This is a jailbreak. We got in with a jet-pack drop to find you, and the bombers are covering our escape. The getaway shuttle will be here soon. We have to hurry! Everyone in this cell is coming with us; no one is staying to give any information on us to the Galra! Out!”

Matt, who had moved toward the masked rescuer (probably out of his unfailing curiosity), began to protest.

“What about all the other prisoners? We can’t just leave them!”

The feathery rescuer—Te-Osh as the other prisoner had called her—grabbed Matt’s arm and dragged him toward the gaping new escape route. “No time or space on the shuttle for that. We have to go now!”

I got stuck behind the crowd of other prisoners rushing toward the opening, but I could see Matt coughing from the debris that remained in the air as he was pulled away. We all moved out of the cell, where a few sentries lay on the ground, disabled by the blast. We maneuvered through the halls of the prison, led by a second rescuer who had been guarding the blasted door. Our rescuers shot and disabled sentries and cameras as we moved. There were dozens of those cameras, though, so it’s possible that a few were missed. I prayed that the Galra wouldn’t be able to make use of any evidence we left behind in our escape.

I had no idea where we were going, but somehow, we ended up climbing a ladder through a hatch and out onto the roof. Right on cue, a shuttle descended toward our position and opened a back hatch while touching down lightly on the roof of the prison. A figure inside, masked like the others, shouted, “Hurry! The diversion bombers can’t hold out much longer!” As I entered the craft, I glanced over to the mines and saw it was true. The ships that were attacking the facilities would soon be overpowered.

The shuttle took off as soon as everyone was on board, not even closing the hatch until we were several meters in the air. Through a porthole-like window, I could see the bombers pulling back as we rose out of the atmosphere. The many battered ships avoided laser cannon fire and small fighter crafts for a few moments, but then the stars around us seemed to smear across my view, and we sped away faster than light.

I turned back away from the window to look at the shuttle’s occupants. The prisoner who had recognized the rescuers—Shikri, as I now knew he was named—rushed the masked figures, who caught him in a tight group embrace. I felt my agitated breathing return to normal, and I sought out Matt in the crowd. I hugged the skinny teen tightly and gasped, “We’re free!”

 


	18. Self Care is Important

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting rescued from alien prison-slavery by other alien rebels is a little overwhelming, so sometimes one just has to slow down, get a new job, and wax nostalgic about hair.

          The flight to wherever we were going was long, and we were all exhausted from the day’s work and the evening’s excitement. I found myself drifting off to sleep, sitting on the floor against the hull with Matt leaning on my shoulder. An unfamiliar emotion— _bliss_ —washed over me as I closed my eyes.

          The shuttle’s landing woke me with a start. I hopped up as quickly as my sore body would allow, and I helped Matt stand as well. The hatch to the rear of the spacecraft opened, and the rescuers, with masks now removed, ushered all the passengers out into the weak morning light of the planet on which we had landed. The air was chilly and fresh, and although I had stopped being surprised by breathable atmospheres, the air quality was wonderfully invigorating.

          We didn’t stay outside for long, though. We entered a garage-like hangar full of smaller ships and rover-like land vehicles. Beings of all shapes, sized, colors, and species milled around, working on the machines and talking amongst themselves. We filed past all these different aliens into a separate room. This area was open, and several stations that looked oddly like emergency room vitals carts were interspersed throughout the space.

          Te-Osh stepped to the front of the crowd and began to instruct us. “We are going to help all of you the best that we can, but we need to learn more about each of you and see if any of you are sick or hurt. Please line up for triage. I promise this will be a comfortable process.”

          It was only a few moments before I was seated at a station. A brown-skinned being that looked quite a lot like a human woman was evaluating me. She had white speckles on her forehead and hands, and her eyes and short hair were a silvery color. She was really quite pretty.

          “Where are you from?” she asked as she used unfamiliar devices to measure my vitals and check for injuries.

          “My friend and I are from a planet called Earth. I don’t know where it is relative to where we are now,” I answered.

          She pulled up a tablet with a map of the universe. “Can you identify it on this map?” she inquired, offering the tablet to me.

          After just a moment of examining the map, I shook my head in frustration. “I’m sorry, but no. I was captured by the Galra in passing while on a scientific expedition to the edge of our system. As far as I know, my team was the first of our kind to encounter beings from other worlds. I’ve never seen any of the systems on this map.”

          She looked at me quizzically. “Your planet is not occupied by the Galra?” I shook my head. “Your home must be very, very far away, then. I don’t know if we have any ships designed for a journey that long. I’m sorry.”

          “I can’t go home?” I asked, already understanding what she was implying but wanting to be sure.

          “I’m afraid not. Not now, anyway. Again, I’m very sorry.” She was quiet as she worked for a moment, but then she spoke again. “Would you be interested in joining our rebellion against the Galra until you can find a way to your planet?”

          I was a little surprised, but open to the idea. “What would I do in the rebellion?” I asked.

          “Well, what are your skills? We can use whatever specialties we can get,” she explained rationally.

          “My role on my expedition team was the medic, but as a gladiator for Zarkon, I also developed my combat skills.”

          Her eyes grew wide. “Well, we could certainly use you here if you would like to stay. If not, I’m sure there are people nearby who would be willing to take you in.”

          I only had to think for a moment. “If I can’t go home, I’d like to help stop the Galra from doing to others what they did to me. I’ll stay and fight.”

          She smiled. “What is your name?”

          “Rissa. And yours?”

          “I’m Kazra. Welcome to the rebellion.” Kazra held up something that looked like a tape measure. “You’re as healthy as can be hoped after what you’ve been through, but let’s see if we have any clothes that will fit you. What you have on right now is terribly unsanitary.” She measured my height, arm span, chest, and hips before handing me and a record of my size to another rebel.

          I was escorted to a room that resembled a thrift store with fewer ugly colors. My quiet and somewhat bird-like chaperone picked out some simple things for me to wear and let me find some shoes that would work for my feet. When our shopping was finished, the rebel led me through winding halls once more. Our destination this time was a bathroom with a setup remarkably similar to bathrooms in the United States, just a bit more high-tech.

          “You should find everything you need for hygiene under the sink,” my companion said without emotion before disappearing down the hall again.

          Some of the hygiene implements I found were entirely unrecognizable. I supposed they were meant to be used in the care of scales, feathers, fur, horns, and anything else that my new coworkers might have that I did not. I was, however, able to find a razor, tweezers, a hairbrush and clean toothbrush, something that looked like a nail clipper, and various soaps and lotions. There was a mirror above the sink, but I didn’t dare look until I had cleaned up. Properly equipped, I set to work on the mess I had become in nearly nine months of captivity.

          A warm, private shower was divine. Grime and filth ran in the water under my feet, and the heat soothed my sore muscles. The soap smelled fantastic, and the substance I guessed was something like conditioner helped work out some of the snarls of my hair. I wanted to stay under the stream longer, but I decided that resources were probably limited at a secret rebel base, so I shut off the water as soon as it began to run clear.

          I was never one to worry much about shaving my legs unless I were attending a formal event, but given the ordeal I had just escaped, I was _going_ to indulge myself in feeling just that much cleaner. Shaving was quite the chore after eight or nine months, but it was _so_ worth it at the end when I pulled clean clothes over my smooth skin.

          Next came my nails. They were a disaster that would have made my mother cry, and the tool probably wasn’t truly designed for nail clipping, so I had my work cut out for me. The nails didn’t look great when I was done, but at least they were clean and trimmed.

          It was then time to deal with my hair. I had always been rather attached to my hair; my mother had never been very involved in her tribe’s traditions, but she had always kept all my siblings’ hair long, healthy, and well-groomed as was customary among her people. Even my brothers had long hair until they had gone to flight school. My youngest brother, David, had cried when he had received his regulation cut. I’d seen plenty of people at the Garrison get away with longer hair, but the flight school run out of the old Air Force base in Great Falls was less forgiving. Now, I carefully pulled the brush through my tangled rats’ nest, hoping I would be able to save the near-sacred strands. It took a very long time and was quite painful, but eventually, my hair fell loose and straight around my shoulders once more. I pulled the wad of hair I had lost in the combing process out of the brush and disposed of it. I then set to work drying my hair with what I guessed was a blow-dryer. It technically could have been anything, but it blew air, so that was good enough.

          Finally, I was ready to confront my reflection in the mirror. It was a shocking sight, even cleaned up. Small scars littered my thin face, and I noticed a subtle streak of white towards the back of my hair—much smaller than Shiro’s forelock, but too large to pluck out. My skin was broken out and full of excess eyebrow and upper lip hair. I silently cursed my Native American genes for thick, dark hair and my Scandinavian genes that allowed it to grow in places other than my scalp. Tweezers and toothbrush in hand, I got back to work. I was truly a raging feminist that believed my appearance and body hair were my problem and mine alone, but this was my first chance in months to be in control of how I looked, and I was taking advantage of that.

          Satisfied with my face, I cleaned up my materials and threw my prison rags straight in the trash receptacle. I stood back and looked at the finished result. I looked like a stranger, but at least I was a clean and well-groomed stranger. I brushed off the black half-sleeve shirt I’d been given and exited the bathroom.

          Within seconds, I realized I had no idea where I was supposed to go. Ever terrible with directions, I set off along the same path I thought I had traveled with the bird rebel. I hoped to find someone to give me more instructions or at least directions to somewhere I could take a nap. I wandered unsuccessfully for several minutes before I came across anyone else, but when I finally did, I very nearly collided with Te-Osh.

          “Oh, I’m sorry!” I stuttered. Even after all the strange things I had endured as of late, the novelty of my new, unfamiliar environment made me nervous. “I’m afraid I haven’t got any idea where I’m going.”

          “Don’t worry,” she smiled, “we’ve all been a bit lost in these halls before. I’ll take you to the barracks. You were just recruited from among the freed prisoners, weren’t you?”

          “Yes, ma’am,” I nodded.

          “Oh, no, none of that. Just Te-Osh,” she insisted.

          “Well, Te-Osh, thank you for saving me twice now,” I grinned.

          She chuckled a bit. “It’s what we try to do.”

          She led me through the maze of a facility, promising me a map sometime soon. When we reached the barracks, she insisted that I take time to rest.

          “We’ll be taking on the Galra in a major battle soon enough, but you’ve been battling them personally for phoebes. Get some sleep; you deserve it.”

          The bunk I chose was probably less comfortable than the one I had slept in at the Garrison, but compared to my sleeping arrangements as a prisoner, it was heavenly. I even had a _pillow_. The quiet of the room was broken after only a few moments when Matt entered, looking clean and content for the first time since Kerberos.

          “Hey! You’re staying, too?” I asked cheerfully.

          “Of course. We can’t get home yet, and we still have to find my dad and Shiro,” he stated in a matter-of-fact tone.

          I laughed a little. “After all the times we insisted we would figure that out, we’re finally in a position where we might be able to pull it off.”

          “Yep. We’re halfway there,” Matt said, climbing into the bunk above mine. We were able to settle down for some well-deserved sleep, free of wardens and sentries and orders. We could finally rest on our own terms.

          And we had _pillows_.


	19. My Internal Monologue is Mostly Screaming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the author uses an unfortunately extensive amount of personal experience to write a dreadfully long but very accurate chapter about what happens in a therapy session (Hint: It's mostly storytelling and crying)...

_Dunn Court, Great Falls, Montana. It had always been a quiet place while I was growing up, the peace usually only interrupted by birds or the neighbor’s lawnmower. Still, the total silence that now hung in the air was eerie; the sky was an unusual color, and something felt wrong._

_I walked up the rounded concrete stairs that led to the door of my family’s home, my steps the only sound. I felt my pockets for a key, but I didn’t have one. I tested the doorknob and found that it was unlocked. The door swung open, but there was only darkness inside. I stepped into the entryway, and the door closed behind me without being touched._

_I couldn’t see anything, but I knew my own house, so I felt my way to the living room. “Hello?” I called, my voice echoing slightly. A dim spotlight suddenly illuminated the middle of the room, and in the center stood my mother._

_“Mom!” I cried, rushing toward her. I stopped, though, as I realized that she was staring at me coldly._

_“How could you?” she hissed furiously._

_“Wha—what do you mean?” came my stuttered response._

_“Didn’t I teach you anything? Didn’t I teach you about the value of a life? Didn’t I teach you anything about loyalty? I can barely look at you,” she seethed, staring ahead without meeting my eyes._

_“Mom, I know I did some things I regret, but I had to! I had to save my team and get back to you!” My pleas went entirely ignored._

_“They are here, and it’s your fault.”_

_The light shifted to a purple color I had come to know too well, and the rest of the room became illuminated. My entire family knelt in a semi-circle around me, each guarded by a Galra soldier. A soldier pushed my mother to her knees as well, and before I could do anything, eight syringes plunged into eight necks. The Galra retreated into the dark recesses of the room, leaving me with my doomed family._

_I dropped to my knees with all the others, but there was nothing I could do. The eyes of each family member began to water; their mouths began to foam. Then came the convulsions and groans of agony._

_“Rissa!” came the scream of my baby sister, Rochelle._

_Another voice, female and all too familiar, cackled somewhere above me, “Thank you for your contributions.”_

_“No!” I wailed as everything went dark._

           I landed hard on the ground beside my bed, still yelling with limbs flailing. A few of my bunkmates had woken at the sound, but most slept right through it, Matt included. I mumbled an apology to the groggy rebels around me as I left the room to take refuge in the nearest bathroom.

           It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the bright bathroom lights, so I simply breathed heavily with head down and hands gripping the sides of the sink. When my breath, heartrate, and eyes were all functioning normally, I glanced upward at the mirror, staring myself in the eye. I had always had interesting eyes. Most of my siblings had inherited dark brown eyes from my mother, but my youngest sister and I ended up with lighter eyes. Rochelle’s matched the jewel green of my father while mine were a little more complicated. I usually told people they were hazel, but technically, they were green with brown central heterochromia. That sounds unusual, but central heterochromia is actually a very common mutation. It had been several weeks—or ‘movements,’ as they were called here—since Matt and I had been rescued, but my eyes were still the only part of my reflection that I truly recognized as my own.

          Life at the rebel base was infinitely better than anything I had known for many months. For the first time since Kerberos, I was free and relatively safe, which made for a nice environment in which to ‘celebrate’ a rough approximation of my twenty-first birthday a few days—quintants—previously. However, that safety came with a price. During my schooling, I had been taught extensively about the biochemistry and psychology of trauma survivors. Oftentimes, survivors’ brains do not allow a full processing of traumatic events until a while after the trauma is over. The brain goes into a survival mode where it cannot begin the healing process until the person is safely past the trauma. Apparently, at the rebel outpost, I was safe enough to begin feeling the effects of the nightmare I had endured.

          It was difficult to notice the dissociation at first, but the feeling of being a stranger or intruder in my own body didn’t dissipate with time; instead, it grew in intensity. My personality felt wrong. I felt as though the old version of me had died and been replaced with an imposter. My perceptions pervasively felt just slightly out of phase with reality. It was subtle but distressing.

          The nightmares were easier to recognize for both me and my bunkmates. Usually, I relived scenes from the gladiatorial arena or from the Druid lab; these were usually jumbled and not especially vivid, just unpleasant. Other times, though, my dreams were vibrant and vivid and felt real. I was usually the villain or at least a guilty party in those dreams. Sleep was difficult to achieve, only marginally restful, and plagued with psychological disturbances.

          I splashed a little water on my face in an attempt to ground myself. It didn’t help much, but I felt more awake. I wasn’t sure if it were still late night or early morning. Getting dressed for physical training would require going back to the barrack and further disturbing my roommates, so I simply began to wander the halls aimlessly in my pajamas. Anything would be better than going back to sleep.

          The base was never truly quiet; there were always rebels monitoring the system in which we were located, always someone keeping watch for the Galra or planning the next move. The halls were dim, though, so it was clearly still the night shift. Quiet chatter and mechanical beeping emanated from each room I passed. After several minutes of thought and solitude, I made my way to the infirmary. I needed to learn more about treating wounds on nonhuman species, and there wasn’t anything else I could think of to be productive.

          The infirmary door slid open when I touched my hand to a nearby sensor, but upon entering, I realized I was not alone. Kazra was organizing a supply cabinet, but she turned to me when she heard me come in.

          “Oh, Rissa! I didn’t know you were on the night shift,” she practically sang with cheerfulness, somehow not noting my nightclothes.

          “Well, I’m not, but I couldn’t sleep,” I said half truthfully. “I figured I may as well do some studying if I’m going to be awake. I still have lots to learn about other species’ biology.”

          “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather take a sleep aid and get some rest? Tomorrow is set to be a busy quintant,” she insisted with concern on her face.

          I sighed. “It really wasn’t that I couldn’t sleep, more like I’m not eager for what I see when I’m asleep,” I admitted sheepishly. “Besides, sleep aids usually knock me out for several hours, and I’m sure I don’t have that kind of time before I’m supposed to be awake.”

          The concern grew graver. “Rissa, are you having nightmares that are keeping you from sleeping?” Kazra asked with a sternness I hadn’t heard from her before.

          “Yes.” My voice came softly before I inhaled through my nose deeply, closing my eyes so as not to face her. “I’m not surprised after all the things I had to deal with as a prisoner, but it’s still disruptive and unpleasant.”

          “Is there anything I can do to help? Would you like to talk about the things that are bothering you?”

          I sighed as I opened my eyes and turned to face her. “Logically, I know that I should talk to someone about it. I know that’s an important part of healing, but at the same time, I really don’t want to. I don’t want to think about it, talk about it, recognize that it happened—anything. I’ve almost talked to Matt about it all sorts of times, but I don’t want to burden him with it. He has enough on his own plate with his father being who knows where; besides, he’s just a kid.”

          Kazra looked thoughtful. “I think Matthew has shown that he can handle a bit more than you seem to think.”

          Sensing that this was going to be a full conversation, I found a seat on a bench beside an examination cot before responding. “I know he’s tough and that he’s had to grow up really fast out here, but I have a younger brother who’s about the same age. I can’t help but think of Matt as a little brother that I need to protect.” The dream images of my siblings’ deaths at the hands of the Galra flashed in my mind, and I shuddered. “Especially since there isn’t anything I can do to protect the siblings I have by blood.”

          “That’s not true. You’re here, preparing to fight the Galra. Your family is worlds away, but you are doing everything possible to make the universe a safe place for them.” Kazra sighed. “That’s the right and noble thing to do.”

          She had a dark expression I hadn’t seen on her before—melancholy? Regret?

          “What about your family?” I asked tentatively. “Are they safe? If you don’t mind my asking…”

          She exhaled as my question tapered off. “If I tell you about my family, you have to talk to me about what happened to you in Galra captivity.”

          I considered the proposition for a moment. “That’s fair.”

          Kazra took a deep breath and climbed onto one of the cots as a seat. “When the Galra came to my home world, they overtook us with minimal effort. We were never a race of fighters, and although we had the technology to travel to other worlds in a reasonable amount of time, we rarely did. We kept to ourselves and had almost no allies.”

          “I was taken away from my family—my parents and sister, Zelri—very early on in the occupation because I was an apprentice to a healer. A Priestess of influence in the empire had interest in us. On the journey to central command, however, there was some sort of accident. An engine explosion of some type. In the chaos, I was able to get away from the Galra with a few others. We couldn’t go back to our home, of course, so we simply settled on the nearest free planet.”

          “This planet was home to a race more prepared to resist the Galra; the people had already heard of the empire conquering their allies, so this rebel cell was born on that world. They were ready to put up a fight when the Galra came for them. It didn’t work, of course; the Galra were much too powerful, so the rebel forces and as many civilians as possible had to be evacuated to this base. I was among those civilians since I didn’t join the rebellion at first. I just wanted to live my life peacefully.”

          Kazra paused, a look of pain on her delicate, brown face. “Then, probably a decaphoeb later, I received word of my planet’s destruction. The Galra took our resources, drained the planet’s life force, and left my whole race to starve on a dead world. I later learned that this is their standard practice; when the Galra have finished with a world, they leave nothing behind. And meanwhile, I had done nothing.” A few tears escaped her silvery eyes, and she hung her head in shame and sorrow.

          “Kazra, I don’t think there would have been anything you _could_ have done,” I interjected, trying to console her. “The Galra are an empire that has dominated hundreds of galaxies, maybe more, for thousands of years. It was out of your power.”

          “Perhaps you are right, but we will never know. I will never have a chance to protect my people. All I can do is give everything I have, everything I am to try and stop _them_ from destroying another people ever again. You—you made the right choice the first time. You are ready to fight now, and in that way, you are certainly working to protect your family.”

          “And you are here now too, doing the right and noble thing. It doesn’t help anyone for you to be so hard on yourself, Kazra,” I assured. 

          She smiled at me thoughtfully. “That was rather wise, Rissa. Thank you.” She paused for a moment to dry her tears. “Now it’s your turn.”

          I took a deep breath before starting. It was difficult at first, but once I got going, the words flowed freely—like water in a long-blocked pipe. I let it all out at once in a full surrender; I had held it in for months, and I no longer had the energy to keep up a front.

          “Like I told you when I was first liberated from the labor camp, I was captured while on a scientific expedition to the edge of our solar system, the very farthest any humans had ever traveled. I was the medic, Matt and his father were jointly responsible for communications, mechanics, and scientific research, and we had a pilot named Shiro.”

          “A Galra scouting vessel picked us up on a moon we were researching, and the Emperor ordered us to be brought to the main fleet for interrogation. They thought we might have information about something called Voltron, but to this day, I have no idea what that is.”

          Kazra looked at me with a blank expression. “I’ve never heard of anything called Voltron, either. Admittedly, my people had limited contact with other worlds, so I’m likely a horrible person to ask for information. Please, go on.”

          “They tortured us, trying to get us to tell them where this Voltron thing was. There were these Druids. They made my blood run cold just from being near them. They were the most frightening beings I’ve encountered in all my time out here in space. They electrocuted us. Their High Priestess, Haggar, choked us with some sort of mystic power. She dug through our minds and found we knew nothing. The others were sent away; Matt’s father went to a labor camp, and Matt and Shiro were placed with other prisoners headed to the gladiatorial arena. Haggar kept me around for a little while because I knew about biology, something that seemed to be an obsession for her. It was probably her who wanted to see you and the other healers from your home. She dug through my mind further—” my voice cracked. “It was excruciatingly painful, mentally and physically. She learned everything I know about how living things work, especially humans. She could use that information to hurt my people.” I felt tears forming in my eyes. “They could have gone to Earth and hurt my family. That witch might still have Shiro. She could be using what I know to hurt him, and if that were true, I could never forgive myself.”

          I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to focus and calm my emotions. “It didn’t stop there. When she was done with me, they took me to where they were holding Matt and Shiro. I was weak from whatever Haggar did to me to get the information, so I passed out. I think it was the next day when they took us to the arena. There was a horrible beast inside, and they were going to send Matt in to fight it. There was no way he would have survived; he was even skinnier then than he is now. Shiro saved him by injuring his leg and taking his place. I have no idea how Shiro survived the fight, but he became a gladiator. I had to fix up Matt’s leg or the Galra may have killed him, but I did it with supplies I’d kept and hidden from before our capture. This was apparently forbidden, so they marked me as a disobedient troublemaker.” I showed Kazra my tattoo. She touched the inky symbol lightly and looked at me, her face clearly urging me to continue.

          “They sent Matt to the labor camp once he was all patched up, and they kept me in holding for gladiator matches. This lovely little friend of mine,” I gestured to my marked arm, “sent me straight into the ring the next chance they got.”

          I stopped abruptly; the next part was a bit much. Kazra’s hand found my shoulder. “Let it out,” she urged. “You’re doing so well.”

          I shut my eyes. “That was the first time I had to kill for them. I compromised the things I believe in for their entertainment and my own survival. I had to do it again and again for months. The only good thing that came out of that time was that I found Shiro again. We were in next-door cells, so we kept each other more or less sane. I lost a part of myself in that arena, and it may have been everything if it hadn’t been for him.”

          “They eventually pitted us against each other, Shiro and me. We wouldn’t fight, so they pulled us out of the arena and pushed us into Haggar’s experimentation. I’m not entirely sure what they did to me; that time is mostly a blur. Sometimes they paralyzed me for the procedures, but sometimes they didn’t even use anesthetic. I have scars from invasive exploratory surgeries.” I lifted my shirt to reveal my abdomen. My skin was lighter than usual from lack of sun and generally unhealthy conditions, but it was still a rich tan that contrasted sharply with the pale scars I would likely carry to my grave. Kazra gasped at the sight, and I dropped the shirt back to where it had been.

          “It was even worse for Shiro. They—they took his arm, the right one. That was his dominant hand. I have no idea why they did that to him, and I have no idea why they stopped toying with me. They just sent me to the labor camp one day. They kept Shiro there, though. I don’t know if they’re still experimenting on him or if they sent him somewhere else or if he’s even alive…” My voice finally failed on that last word, and I lowered my head into my hands, elbows on my thighs. Kazra squeezed her hand on my shoulder comfortingly, helping me go on with the story.

          “From that point, it was just the life of a slave for me. Backbreaking work, verbal taunts, limited food, poor hygiene, physical punishment—it was a difficult time, but it wasn’t very complicated. I had Matt again, too, but his father was taken somewhere else before I got there. After a while, the rebels here came for us, and now I just have to try and put myself back together well enough to fight the Galra.”

          I was silent for several minutes—dobashes—whatever. Kazra didn’t say anything either. A pale light was beginning to make itself known on the horizon through the infirmary window, so we had obviously talked for several hours. Kazra slid off the cot and joined me on my bench, cautiously wrapping her slim arms around me. “You’ve been brave, and you’ve done well,” she finally insisted.

          Her embrace was safe and comforting, and I felt something inside me snap. A wall broke down, and I could suddenly no longer keep back the tears. Tears quickly became sobs, and Kazra held me tighter.

          “Tell me,” she coaxed gently.

          Through the weeping, I managed a few words. “It’s just so much, and we’re still so far from being through it. I—I—I’ve tried so hard to be strong for the others, but I’m barely more than a kid myself.” I turned to bury my head in her shoulder. The sobs wracked my whole body; I was practically choking on my pain. Kazra softly rubbed my back, hushing me soothingly.

          Once I had run out of tears, Kazra led me to a cot and administered a sleep aid. She promised it would keep nightmares at bay, and as I began to lose consciousness under a light blanket, I could hear her on a comm device getting me excused from the day’s duties. I tried to thank her, but my tongue wouldn’t cooperate, and I fell into a deep and finally restful sleep.


	20. What's More Iconic Than Space Rebels?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Much to the amusement of Rissa, Matt fulfills his lifelong dream of becoming a space anime hero.

          Crying with Kazra had been very cathartic, so as soon as my sleeping schedule was restored to normal, my learning and duties around the base fell into a productive routine. Things in my head and body weren’t perfect; I still suffered from some dissociation, and my dreams were still pretty rough, but an enormous weight had been lifted from my shoulders, and I finally was more comfortable sharing my experiences and admitting that this healing process wasn’t something I should do alone. On regular, healthy days, I studied alien medicine with Kazra, and I trained in combat with Te-Osh and Matt.

          Matt was thriving with the rebels; it genuinely warmed my heart to see him growing and succeeding. The poor kid had been so close to his father, but now he had been separated from him, not knowing what had become of him, for several months. Matt’s tech genius allowed him to adjust to alien forms of communication technology; I got the feeling that ‘space rebel tech expert’ was his calling in life. What a nerd.

          I really couldn’t judge though; not only was he becoming a valuable asset to the rebels, but I was also a massive nerd doing well in my own right. Most of what I knew about biology and emergency medicine turned out to be fairly universal, so once I got a feel for the key differences in certain species’ biochemistry and anatomy, my medical capabilities were on par with the rest of the healthcare team. The new instruments were pretty easy to master as well.

          From the talk around the base (I couldn’t be exactly sure since I wasn’t a part of the officers’ planning meetings), it seemed there was a plan in the works to liberate the home planet of this rebel cell, the birthplace of the resistance against the empire. Everyone participated in combat training, and there was an awful lot of coordination happening with other cells and operatives hidden among the population of the planet. The name was some horrible thing I couldn’t possibly pronounce or spell, so Matt and I agreed to simply call it “The Target Planet.” In any case, there was much to do, and everyone was hard at work in preparation for the upcoming fight.

          Matt and I liked to do our workouts together because we already trusted each other, and Te-Osh had really taken us under her wing (metaphorically, of course. She had feathers, not wings). We were among only very few liberated prisoners from the Angorian Labor Camp who decided to stay with the rebels, so she took a personal interest in coaching us.

          She started us off training with guns. Being a Montana girl, I was already familiar with the basics of firearms, but these laser blasters were a little different. There was very little kick, which was nice, but most of the models possessed by the rebels had minimal or no scoping, so the rifle-style weapons were a bit difficult to aim. Matt and I collaborated to develop an attachable scope for any blasters we would be using, but by the time we built a prototype, we had both already reached reasonable accuracy with the unmodified guns. Pistol-style blasters were easier for me since human versions don’t have very sophisticated aiming mechanisms either.

          Hand-to-hand combat came next. Te-Osh insisted that we (meaning mostly Matt) get up to snuff in unarmed fighting before allowing us to study any melee weapons. “You could be disarmed in a fight, so you need to have a foundation of skills, principles, and confidence on which to fall back if things do not go your way in an altercation,” she preached. My Sensei in jujutsu back on Earth had subscribed to a similar philosophy, so this training was nothing new for me. Matt, however, seemed to have never needed to develop much coordination or tactical awareness, so Te-Osh and I were both very involved in helping him learn.

          “This isn’t fair, Rissa!” Matt whined jokingly as I let him out of an elbow lock one day. “You had a head start of a few years.”

          “Oh, come on, I’m not _that_ good,” I teased. “I’m still technically a green belt; I wasn’t quite ready to test for promotion to brown before leaving for Kerberos, so my Sensei and I had a plan to take about a month after getting back to get me prepared. Obviously, that didn’t work out. I wouldn’t even be allowed to teach you or anyone else if we were back on Earth, but this is a space war, so we have to do what we have to do. You should just feel lucky it’s me and not Shiro you’re fighting. The man is a second-degree black belt.”

          Matt looked at me blankly as he prepared himself for another round of sparring. “Is that a lot higher than you? I have no idea.”

          “Yeah, it’s _a lot_ higher than me,” I laughed as I threw the first punch of our new match. “Most mornings on the ship, he was practically playing with his food while we were ‘sparring.’”

          “Still looked to me like you were about to kill each other,” Matt panted. He was managing to block all my strikes, but he hadn’t managed to try any attacks of his own. I slowed up a little, trying to help him recognize an opening for a strike.

          “That’s just the nature of jujutsu techniques. They come from the battlefields of feudal Japan; they are not nice at all.” Matt finally threw a hooked punch, but I made him regret it by blocking his strike with both arms, striking at his neck, and turning backward into him and throwing him over my shoulder in _ippon seoi nage._ Good thing for him we had practiced how to take a fall.

          “Ow,” he grunted anyway while Te-Osh laughed from the side of the room.

          “All right, Matt,” she grinned, “let’s go through how you might have been able to escape that throw.”

          As difficult as combat training was for Matt, it really seemed to help bolster his growth and recovery from imprisonment. “It’s empowering, really,” he said one day. I nodded in understanding. “I was trapped, a slave for months. I was completely at the ‘mercy’ of the overseers; I couldn’t stop them from treating me and the others the way that they did. I’m not saying knowing a few combat techniques would have stopped us from getting kidnapped or freed me from the labor camp sooner, but now I feel like I have some more control over what people can do to me.”

          It was probably mid-August on Earth by the time we were introduced to close-range weapons. I honestly preferred no weapons because of my background, but the security of a weapon was very helpful psychologically for Matt. Despite my pleas for him to join me as a dual dagger user, he opted instead for a bo-staff, Te-Osh’s area of expertise.

          “Please, Matt?” I had begged in good fun. “The terms used in Japanese for dual-wielders are often also euphemisms for bisexuality. It’ll be hilarious.”

          “I refuse to be a stereotype,” he had said flatly before breaking into a laugh. “Kidding. I’m already a stereotype. My birthday is September 23, Celebrate Bisexuality Day. I’m just a little scared of sharp things.”

          Matt progressed terrifyingly quickly with his staff. Te-Osh could still easily put him in his place if he got too cocky, but with the range of his new weapon, he could finally give me a run for my money in sparring.

          “Nicely done,” I exclaimed the first time he took me down.

          He grinned in poorly contained pride and excitement. “I feel like an anime hero,” he joked, doing some weird backwards salute with his fingertips to his forehead.

          I rolled my eyes. “How is it that I sometimes manage to forget how much of a weeb you are?” Te-Osh looked on with confusion. Apparently, whatever translator technology that allowed us all to communicate was not able to translate the term ‘weeb.’

          I almost felt bad for forming a new team family, but it also felt so good to have people in my corner again. Matt and I pulled together a whole group; there were the two of us and Te-Osh as well as Kazra and Matt’s tech mentor, Zigro. We ate together, laughed together, and shared our dreams for a better universe. We even made plans to give Matt a better nineteenth birthday than my twenty-first had been. I worried about Shiro, Sam, and all the people of Earth, but at that busy rebel base, surrounded by an eclectic but warm mix of new friends, things didn’t seem as lonely and bleak as before. It felt like things might turn out all right after all.

 


	21. Alien Freaking Radio Chatter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Earth is safe, but there is something weird going on...

          Sneaking through the darkened halls of the Garrison after curfew was no easy task for the clumsy Cadet Renee Olsen, but it was a necessary one it she and ‘Pidge Gunderson’ were to learn anything new about the fate of their families. The girls avoided the patrolling officers and tiptoed as silently as possible to the roof.

          Renee sighed as she helped Pidge set up her equipment. “What do you think we’re going to find by scanning the edge of the solar system? The Garrison doesn’t have any stations, probes, or radio beacons out there right now, and any equipment from the missing ship may be losing power by now. It _has_ been about a year since they left.”

          Pidge shrugged as she fired up her tech. “I don’t really know, but whatever caused the mission failure was something anomalous, so we might be able to see some indication of that anomaly in the scans. We very well might find nothing, but this is worth a shot since hacking the Garrison officers’ computers hasn’t given us anything helpful yet.”

          Renee slumped down onto the roof next to her friend. After all the trouble they had gone to in getting Pidge into the Garrison as a boy to gain access to Garrison servers and files, the teens hadn’t been able to glean anything new from Pidge’s hacking efforts. It seemed that either the Garrison truly didn’t know any more than the girls or that the Earth’s premier space exploration institution was covering up something massive. Only time and further investigation could determine which it was.

          After several minutes of scanning and adjusting with no results, Pidge switched on a long-range radio receiver and put on headphones. “Keep scanning with the space-based radar for any unusual objects. I’m going to start checking radio communication frequencies.”

          Renee looked at the shorter girl with extreme skepticism. “What are you looking for? Alien radio chatter?”

          “I’m not ruling anything out,” Pidge insisted as she tuned the dials on her homemade receiver.

          An exasperated sound escaped Renee’s mouth. “Okay. You know I trust you and your plans, but _sometimes_ …”

          “SHH!” Pidge suddenly gestured frantically, eyes wide. She hurriedly pressed a few buttons on her equipment, most of which Renee couldn’t identify due to the hodge-podge design and construction.

          “What are you doing?” Renee whispered.

          “Recording what I’m hearing,” Pidge hissed. “It’s mostly a garbled mess, but I think it might be alien freaking radio chatter.”

 

 

          Renee had initially been _extremely_ doubtful that the sounds Pidge was picking up from the edge of the solar system were alien in origin, but the next several days of investigation had quelled her skepticism. The frequency of the radio transmissions wasn’t one known to be used by anyone on Earth, and although the message was initially unintelligible, the sounds did seem to follow speech patterns and the structure of a language. This was either some top-secret coded message intended for someone on Earth or it was indeed alien radio chatter.

          “To figure out if this is really an alien transmission, we’re going to have to figure out how to decode or translate it, but how the heck are we going to do that?” Pidge asked in frustration one night in the barrack she and Renee shared.

          Renee grinned. “Fear not, little Pidgeon. I may not be a tech savant like you, but I’m decent with coding and really good with languages. Between the two of us, we should be able to come up with some sort of sound analysis and translation tech and programming.”

          Pidge was shocked at first, but she then smiled broadly. “Awesome! I didn’t know you were a language geek!”

          Renee stretched out her arms and interlaced her fingers, cracking them dramatically. “It’s a gift. I got it from my dad. Rissa was—is—” she corrected herself hopefully “pretty good, too. It’s all about pattern recognition.”

          “Looks like we have a plan and a lot of work to do,” Pidge declared.

 

 

          It took two weeks and quite a bit of cathartic screaming, but at last the girls had a workable translation algorithm for the radio messages. It wasn’t perfect, but Renee continued adjusting it as they received and recorded more transmissions.

          The messages seemed to be reports of some kind of search. They all had a similar format, involved spatial coordinates and numbered sectors, and referred to something called Voltron that Renee simply couldn’t translate.

          “This Voltron thing is some sort of specific noun that we don’t have a context for—maybe a weapon or valuable resource—but since it’s in all these transmissions accompanied by these notations of negation, it’s safe to say that Voltron is what they are looking for, and they are not finding it.” Renee rubbed her eyes and her temples, trying to keep a headache at bay. “I’m not seeing anything in here that has anything to do with the Kerberos mission, but this is _definitely_ ‘alien freaking radio chatter,’ as you put it. Which is freaky and probably significant.”

          “So, what do we do with this information?” Pidge was, for once in her life, completely stumped.

          “For now, the best I can think is to keep scanning and listening and hope we find something relevant. We can’t go around telling people we’re getting alien transmissions. One, they’ll think we’re nuts, and two, they’ll shut us down and leave us no way to figure out what’s going on out there on the edge of the solar system.”

 

 

          A few more weeks of listening, working, and waiting went by. On top of the alien radio business, Renee and Pidge still had their studies to attend to. Pidge was an advanced communications technology student, so she ran flight simulations with third-year cadets, but her team was struggling, something that caused her extra stress. Renee was luckier in that regard, but the second year of communication officer training was test-intensive, so she spent many nights holed up in the barrack with study materials and a flashlight.

          One night in October, after a particularly humiliating simulator failure, Pidge rummaged around the barrack, stuffing assorted bits of tech into a backpack. “I seriously need a quiet session of listening to unintelligible alien radio after today. Want to come, Renee?”

          Renee, who was seated at her desk, resting her head on an open book, sat up and shook her head. “I’m waiting for a call from my mom. I haven’t been able to talk to her in almost two weeks between tests, homework, and crazy alien messages.”

          “I’ll get out of your hair, then. Wouldn’t want you to have to explain to your mom why your roommate is a ‘boy.’”

          Renee leaned back in her chair and watched as her friend zipped up her bag and donned her hideous orange boots. “Yeah, that might cause some problems. Remind me why you have to be a boy; there are plenty of female cadets here, and you sort of look exactly like your brother with the haircut and glasses.”

          “Like I said before, the Garrison is sexist,” Pidge huffed. “They were freaking out when I hacked them, but it wasn’t so much the fact that they had been hacked that bothered them; it was the fact that they were hacked by a ‘little girl.’” The last words were enunciated with finger quotes by the exasperated fifteen-year-old. “Scrawny tech nerd boys are a dime a dozen around here, so even looking like my brother, I don’t draw any attention as a boy. A short tech-junkie girl would be more suspicious.”

          “You’re right. This is just quite the hoax we have going on here,” Renee sighed. The monitor of her desk computer lit up with an image of her mother; it was time for the video call.

          “I’m out,” Pidge declared as she headed towards the door.

          “Good luck with the alien radio. I’ll help you translate it tomorrow,” Renee promised. Pidge exited the room, and Renee answered her mother’s call.

          “Hey! How goes it, stranger?” Diane asked with a tired smile.

          “They are trying to kill me with tests, but I’m still kicking around somehow,” Renee joked darkly. “What about you?”

          “Same old, same old. People at the hospital need drugs and help going to the bathroom all the time, and their families always know better than me, but like I said, same old.”

          “And the kids?”

          “You know how young kids are; they’re pretty resilient and flexible. Eva and Rochelle are pretty much normal. Your dad and I decided not to put Rochelle in the gifted program at school, though. It would make Eva terribly jealous that her little sister got to be in it and not her, and they don’t need that kind of conflict right now. Lila is still having a hard time, but meeting with the school counselor is helping.”

          “I take it that David is still a mess?” Renee asked, sounding much more callous than she intended.

          Diane nodded with a sigh. “He loves space and flying, but he’s just so shaken right now, and his academics are getting more intense on top of everything else. He says he’s not even sure he wants to apply to the Garrison anymore.”

          “What did you tell him?”

          “I said that your dad and I won’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to do, but I reminded him that the Garrison is something he has wanted for himself for a long time. What’s happening now is temporary, but his educational decisions will follow him his whole life.”

          Renee nodded in agreement and understanding. “Did he take that well?”

          Diane snorted a little. “Of course not. It’s David. The only one who could really get him to take things well was Rissa, and if she were here, he wouldn’t _need_ any help. I tried to get Marcus to call and talk to him, pilot-to-pilot and brother-to-brother, but you know how those two never really connected.”

          “Yeah,” Renee acknowledged softly. “After all those years of wanting a little brother, Marcus was never very happy about how sensitive the one he got was.”

          “Don’t be like that, Renee,” Diane chided. “You were never any nicer to hi—”

          The call service dropped out suddenly and completely. “What the heck?” Renee exclaimed.

          A slow, blaring alarm rang out over the intercom system. “Attention, students. This is not a drill,” came the voice of Commander Iverson. “We are on lockdown! Security situation Zulu Niner. Repeat: all students are to remain in barracks until further notice.”

          _Security situation?_ Renee wondered. Her stomach sank suddenly. _Pidge. It must have something to do with her._ On instinct, Renee started rooting through her roommate’s belongings, taking and hiding anything that might provide clues to Pidge’s identity—photos, sanitary products, a few remarkably restrictive sports bras, and trinkets from home to name a few. Pidge had taken her laptop with her, so there was no way for Renee to erase her email or search history, so she had to settle for erasing all electronic evidence Renee had of correspondence with Katie Holt. Finally, agitated but satisfied she had done everything she could to protect herself and her friend, Renee settled into bed and waited for morning.

 

          Pidge didn’t come back to the barrack that night, the next morning, or at all. The Garrison officers did eventually come to search the room, giving Renee only vague information on what had occurred that night. Apparently, Pidge and ‘his’ simulator teammates Lance McClain and Hunk Garrett had been seen on security footage assisting in the kidnapping of a Garrison officer. Renee had no idea what any of that was about, so she didn’t even have to lie to her commanding officers when they questioned her. The officers also found nothing suspicious in the barracks, mostly thanks to Renee’s efforts.

          Although terribly worried about her friend, there wasn’t much Renee could do except carry on as normally as possible. Without Pidge’s equipment, the search for the missing Kerberos mission was at a standstill, and there was only so much more Renee could glean from the recorded alien transmissions. She tried to find contact information for Colleen Holt, Katie’s mother, but as the family of a high-ranking Garrison officer, the Holt family address and phone number were nowhere to be found on the internet or in Garrison files without special authorization. Renee was completely and utterly stuck.


	22. A Call to War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There will soon be more action in this story...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry about that very long wait! Since I last updated, I have moved, taken the MCAT, made some serious adjustments to my treatment for a chronic illness, moved again, and started a new job in a biomedical research lab. I've practically been on a different plane of existence; heck, I think I even saw Real Shiro in there somewhere. It's hard to say; it's been a crazy few weeks. I'm back in this reality and this dimension, so here you go! I hope it's not complete nonsense.

          By the best count I could figure, it was probably around our second Thanksgiving away from home when things really started to change around the base. I entered a common area one morning to get some food after a night shift in the infirmary, but instead, I found a crowd of rebels in an absolute tizzy.

          Kazra rushed to my side. “Rissa!” she exclaimed. “Remember that Voltron thing you told me about?”

          “Couldn’t forget if I tried,” I confirmed, tired but interested. Dark humor and casual frankness about serious issues are not very healthy coping mechanisms, but they were so natural for my personality. They were things I had to put effort into avoiding, but I was groggy and out of energy.

          “The communications specialists have picked up transmissions about Voltron, whatever it is. The others are saying it is the stuff of legends, and no one knows quite what to think or say right now. We must find Matthew and Zigro; they’ll surely know more!”

          She grasped my hand and pulled me along excitedly, clearly not having worked through the night like I had. She spotted Matt and his mentor huddled in a corner, deep in conversation. Zigro seemed to be explaining something to Matt. Kazra released my hand and dragged a metal bench over to our male friends. I plopped down without an invitation, eager to get off my feet. My mother used to tell me horror stories of thing that idiots did that landed them in the hospital, and alien rebels _definitely_ had the same idiotic tendencies as humans in Montana.

          “Rissa! Zigro was just finally telling me what Voltron is!” Matt had far too much energy for anyone who had worked a night shift, and I envied him for it. Kids these days. “It’s a giant, ancient Altean robot warrior!”

          “Altean? Also, what?” came my utterly perplexed response.

          “Matthew is just a bit excited. And sleep-deprived,” Zigro sighed, scratching the back of his furry neck. I suddenly realized how much his species resembled Earth’s dogs, and I knew I would have to make a conscious effort to keep taking him seriously. “I can bring you up to speed on Voltron.”

          “You know, I’ve told you both you can call me ‘Matt.’” That statement, laced with good-natured exasperation, was directed at Kazra and Zigro. “Te-Osh and Rissa call me ‘Matt.’”

          “And I’ve told you that I do not understand how ‘Matthew’ can be shortened to ‘Matt.’ There is no ‘t’ sound in ‘Matthew,’” Kazra retorted.

          “Trust me, it’s not the weirdest name shortening in the English language. ‘Richard,’ for example, gets shortened to—”

          “Guys! Voltron, please? Before I fall asleep?” I pleaded.

          “Of course,” Zigro said, bringing the other two back on track. “Millenia ago, there was a planet known as Altea, an advanced, peaceful, and well-traveled civilization. Our measurements of time are Altean in origin, in fact. Voltron was built by an Altean king, and as Matthew said, it was an enormous warrior composed of five robotic lion ships. There are numerous old legends from all across the universe describing the warrior defending innocent peoples from evil forces. Many cultures have slightly different versions of the story, so most modern people thought these stories were adaptions of far less exciting true events, highly sensationalized to entertain children. Last night, though, some of the transmissions we intercepted indicate differently.”

          “I got lost around the ‘robotic lion ships’ part,” I admitted with no shame. “When they interrogated us about Voltron, they definitely mentioned lions, but I have no idea how a lion can be a ship or form a robot warrior.”

          “It was said that the five lion-shaped space vessels became the limbs and body of Voltron,” Zigro tapped away at a tablet as he spoke, “this is an image of an ancient cave painting that many believe was meant to depict Voltron.”

          He handed me the tablet, which I accepted with a sigh. Zigro had this unfortunate tendency to turn everything he said into a lecture reminiscent of some of my duller days at the Garrison, and this conversation was quickly beginning to feel like Intergalactic Archeology 101—not something I could stay awake through for very long.

          I woke up a little when I saw the image, though. Voltron was indeed a giant, anthropomorphic robot thing with lion-face-shaped hands and feet. “So, it’s like a Transformer,” I blurted in a manner most intelligent.

          “Well, yes, I suppose there is some transformation involved.” Now Zigro was the one who was confused.

          “Anyway, last night we intercepted a bunch of Galra transmissions that were talking about some battles with Voltron.” Matt cut in to get to the real point. “Apparently, Voltron is _super_ powerful. The messages were all about how it’s been blowing up Galra fleets and stuff; it’s the only thing anyone around here has ever seen really _scare_ the Galra!”

          “Well, that could change everything!” Kazra exclaimed. “The entire way our officers approach this resistance could be altered if there is finally something out there that can send the Galra running!”

          “How are we supposed to get on board with Voltron? Do we even know where it is?” I mused aloud.

          “At the moment, no,” Zigro confessed. “The transmissions came from several different galaxies, almost as if Voltron has the ability to travel much faster than ordinary technology allows. Still, our people here are excited. I’m sure the officers will do something soon to take advantage of this new development.”

          “We’re going to have to wait and see,” Matt agreed.

 

          We didn’t have to wait very long. The rebels at our base were soon assembled for a massive meeting in the base’s largest hangar, and allies at other bases were linked in to participate via video transmission. General Kiprii addressed the thousands of gathered freedom-fighters with a megaphone-like device.

          “Friends, by now you must have all heard of the famed victories of Voltron, both in times of old and in more recent days. The stories are true; the warrior exists and has returned to free the universe. Just this week, we received confirmation that Voltron liberated a planet in a neighboring galaxy, Olkarion, in no more than a day.” The hangar erupted into gasps and murmurs of awe and disbelief. A few of Kiprii’s captains pounded staffs on the platform on which the officers stood to regain order. “For the first time since the dawn of the empire, the Galra are at war against a well-matched foe,” he continued, “so their forces will be consolidated toward that fight. This is our time to strike and take back our homes in this section of the galaxy. We will launch our assault on—” that horrible planet name “—in one spicolian movement.”

          “Only one movement?” I whispered to Kazra beside me. “We really aren’t any more prepared for the attack than we were before these reports of Voltron. Why are they so sure we are ready now?”

          “Well,” she reasoned quietly as the general continued an impressive speech to galvanize the troops, “as General Kiprii said, the Galra defenses at our target may be thinner now than they ever have been before, but I think more than anything, it’s an issue of morale. The people here are excited, eager to join in a victorious fight against the empire. They feel more confident than ever, and I am sure the officers do not want to lose this moment.”

          “I just hope it’s not premature,” I muttered.

 

          The movement leading up to the beginning of the assault was a hectic one. I hardly saw anyone but the rest of the medical team; almost everyone was busy preparing ships and weapons and refining combat skills, but since the medical staff was a fairly small group for a rebellion of thousands, each of us had to work overtime to prepare sufficient supplies. Everyone was still optimistic about the upcoming attack, but no one was naïve enough to believe there would be no casualties. We converted a dozen or so small ships into mobile field hospitals, all of which would be spread around the attack theater in select secure locations. It was a massive project, but we finished it with one day to spare.

          On the eve of the attack, I had a hard time sleeping again. The infirmary had been stripped bare of all drugs and equipment, including sleep aids, so there was nothing that could help me. Matt wasn’t sleeping either, so we set out on a mission together to find our other friends, pillows and blankets in hand. After just a little exploration, we managed to gather Kazra, Te-Osh, Zigro, and plenty of bedding into a common area.

          The aliens were a bit confused, but Matt and I convinced them of the relaxing properties of a communal nap. It wasn’t too difficult since they all were just as stressed but in need of rest as we were. Within minutes, I had sunk into a pile of pillows that kept me in a position similar to a reclined seat in a car. Matt sleepily rested his head on my shoulder, and an exhausted Kazra curled up in a little ball with her head on my lap. I carefully adjusted the blankets around us so that everyone could breathe and be warm, and within moments, the warm, safe sounds and presence of my space rebel family put me to sleep.

 


	23. Author’s Note

In light of new canon material, I have made some adjustments to this story. Some of these adjustments actually add to the angst, so I’m pretty proud of them. Enjoy if you want!


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